personal letter > why i want to be a interactive art director student at hyper island

hello,

my name is Paula Kreuger
That´s me!. I'm a 28-years-old girl who lives in Florianópolis

Show map in GoogleMaps

, a beautiful island in the south of Brasil. I was born in São Paulo and grew up in a Swedish-German family, with my twin sister

Who is who?

 Marina, my little sister Sylvia and my parents, Henrik and Monika

Me, my sisters and my mother

 .

Passion for creating things is in my DNA. I come from a family with a tradition on engineering, architecture and industrial design. I´ve graduated in Architecture

Sketches for my final project at University, a Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Center

in 2006, but soon I have been atracted by pixels instead of milimeters. I´ve started working with web design at the university in 2001, when I told a "white lie" about my abilities to create websites to get a job, and spent the whole night awake studying and making tutorials to show a work sample the next morning. I´ve got the job, and also the passion to design websites. I´ve worked as an Architect for a few years, but soon it became clear I was happier being a web designer. I´ve worked as a freelancer for almost a year, and accepted a job proposal to be the main designer of a new email marketing web software, for a local company, which is the project I chose to show in this work sample.

I love design that is beautiful, simple and easy to use. My biggest interest is Web Standards, for it improves the website flexibility and acessibility, it is also both art and technical (programming). I also like to study about SEO and web acessibility, and hope to make the web a better place to people with disabilities . I like the magic behind design, and how I can improve the quality of websites with good codes.

In 2002, I had a turning point in my life, when I found myself in a wheelchair, because of a spinal cord tumour, learning how to walk again. I´ve spent the last years recovering, and I still do, although I recovered in a impressive way according to the doctors. I don´t need a wheel chair anymore, but I keep in mind what I´ve learned with this experience: I know I can learn anything, even twice, just like I´ve learned walking. I live the present, but I wish the future, and that makes life worth living.

I know Hyper Island is the best education I can get, a place where I will be able to improve my habilities and share others, and the opportunity to reinforce my roots with scandinavian culture and design.

I look forward to shape and color my ideas at Hyper Island.