Yesterday was the last day of Hyper Island. It’s with mixed feeling that I’m packing up my little student apartment and putting the final touch on the cleaning masterpiece before departing back to Gothenburg. In many ways it has been a fun year filled with new experiences and new friends, although at times I have felt so stressed to get everything to come together that it takes the edge out of the motivation. One year flies by extremely fast.

Last night we had a little get together at Bredgatan and said our goodbye’s. Freddy got a Swedish soccer shirt that everybody signed.

Today Sara-Lee and Caroline came with some snacks to the “office” of our informal agency dubbed Pineapple. Jonas, our CEO, is looking the part with his sunglasses and feet on the table.

It’s official! I’m going to Delete in London for my internship. It’s going to be really interesting to join the Delete team and try to help out in every way possible and also pick up some new skills. And London, oh sweet London. Apart from the short trip back when we released Visual Crooks I haven’t been able to enjoy this European capital as much as I would’ve liked to. It will definitely be a new experience. Along for the ride is my friend Max Lindquist, who will be doing his internship at another agency in London. It’s going to be a blast!

We’re there. The last module for the first year. After summer internships awaits us and after that a final project before graduation. It’s been going really, really fast. The one advice I would give to someone starting his or hers first year this fall would be to get your hands dirty from the get go! It’s a gift of time to study at Hyper Island. The time to learn and discover new things, but also the time to do what you want and work on your own personal pet projects. I’d say take it!

This new module aims to teach us – fittingly – the inner workings of a real agency and so we have all been divided into different roles and teams. My class of 43 have been divided into four agencies with the aim to balance gender, personality and previous experiences fairly across the board. Each agency of 10 or 11 have a CEO, Sales manager, Project managers, Interaction designers, Designers, Art directors and Copywriters.

Before the module began we were asked to choose our top three roles. I chose Designer (since that’s my focus), Art director (would be super to try!) and lastly Copywriter.

My role ended up being a copywriter. Which is cool. It’s never been something I’ve really gotten into it (even though I’ve had some training in my previous little personal projects writing texts) but it will be fun to try it out and I’m going to make sure to make the most of it!

We’ve been having agency meeting for most of the day since introduction at lunch. Sara-Lee is in Stockholm, so we hooked her up on the big screen so she could join in via Skype.

Today we had a little brainstorm in my group, and, well, this is what we came up with.

In Design specialization 2, we’re tasked with creating a visual identity for my good old friend Tor’s startup Noko Jeans. They are three driven young men in their best years, welted together with a crazy idea of making jeans from North Korea. Interesting, to say the least.

More when it comes.

We’re here! Check out VisualCrooks.com if you haven’t already done so. Personally, I think it’s one of the best crew sites out there. I really like the prison concept, even though it is kind of self-explanatory. I’m proud my class did something to mess with the Hyper Island tradition of not doing a prison theme. London was a real blast (something that my crappy cell phone camera won’t be able to replicate) and Movida was a great place to host a flashy release party at (or what about 9 000 pounds for a bottle of bubbly?).

It was such a relief to get the class site up and going, and I could tell by their faces that I wasn’t the only one holding that opinion.

My role in the project has been — surprise — tech! I’ve been working with Stian and Åsmund on the back end, and helping out wherever I could. I wish we had time to put in more decorations in the cell, and some more audio. Can’t get it all, I guess!

Hyper Island DM10KNA Class website

A faction of Hyper Island Stockholm students goes to Berlin to show some love.

In an hour I’m off to Gothenburg, and then tomorrow, London! On Thursday we’re having our release party at Movida. Hope to see you there!

Now we’re all up in Stockholm. We’ve been riding the bus since 5 o’clock (actually 5.30 because Jonas was hindered by helping an old delusional lady) and presentations are about to start.

Interactive Art Directors ‘09 class site: Space is the limit.

A new module. Yep, you’ve heard it before. This time, it’s about Marketing and Promotion. Today we’re listening to Saher Sidholm from Great Works, who’s a strategist, and his presentation about brands. So far so good!

We had final presentations in the Visual communication module this Thursday. My group, who did the BeeHive project, got very good feedback which is always nice! The class website is also being discussed (under much secrecy). But for now, it’s Christmas holidays and portfolio making in the works!

I’ve worked double shifts this week. In school and out of school. I’m tired. My eyelids keep closing on me. Deadlines. Must.. stay.. awake.

Today we had our first lecture aimed towards helping us with our portfolios. Nina Åkerstam and Björn Jeffery were both here, talking about different things. Nina had more of a planner’s approach while Björn talked a lot about internet strategy.

Yey, the first actual designing at school! (It’s only been four months). They had us smell on “Surströmming” and asked us to visualize the stench. This is what I came up with.

Today we had a really good lecture from a guy from Essen. The lecture was about branding in all its different forms and I was amazed by how interested I was in this. Definately something to look into more thoroughly. Unfortunately, I had to catch my train at lunch so I missed half of it, which was a real shame since he really managed to capture my interest.

An interesting footnote, though, is the fact that it took me exactly one hour and five minutes to realize it was actually the logo on all of his Keynote-slides and that it spelled out Essen in inverted letters. Oops.

Now we’ve started a new module called Visual communication. It seems intense. I get the feeling most of us around here are just waiting for Christmas to come. The module’s aim is to get us into the role of client/agency and so we’re in two different groups at the same time.

We’re currently making a concept book, finishing up the Business plan and budget, making a prototype and a presentation for this Thursday. Here’s a sneak peak.

I thought I should write something about what’s been going on lately. We’re still in the Concept development module, and to sum things up we’ve basically just been fine tuning and developing our one idea out of the first fifty. I think we’ve come a pretty long way with our concept which we call “Push the button”. This week we’ve been producing a business plan with a budget. Next week we’ll make a presentation, concept book and practice actually presenting this to the investors (Thursday).

Should be interesting.