Showcase & Discover Creative Work

My full name is Carl Nicolai Lyden but Nicolai is my real first name.
I was born on the 24th of March in 1986 just outside of Hamburg, Germany and went to school there for 13 years.

After finishing school I started to work as a waiter in a company which distributed waiters all over germany in lots of different hotels and events. I worked there for a year and gained some experience in different places and cities until I became a waiter at Park Hyatt Hamburg.
While I was waiting there my brother was studying at Hyper Island in Stockholm and told me that they have a digital media program which he thought might be interesting for me.

I was much into recording music by that time and did some artworks in photoshop and fooled around with flash sometimes.
He told me that it's very hard to get into that school and that i have to do a portfolio so I was working my ass off for half a year until April 2008 when I moved into my brother's place in Stockholm as he was returning to Hamburg for his internship and moved into my place.
As the studies were in swedish I wanted to learn how to speak more fluently and increase my vocabulary. As my father is finnish and we spoke swedish at home I had a pretty good base so I was able to find a job as a waiter at the restaurant and nightclub of the Hilton at Stockholm Slussen.
As Hyper liked my portfolio and how I solved the given tasks I was attending the recruiting test for the digital media class 3 months later.
I passed that test and started studying in August 2008 until November 2009 until I received an internship offer from domani studios New York after they have seen my old Portfolio.

My job at domani was to build banners, little games and rework bigger sites which gave me a good insight into professional development.
Even though developing skills and learning how to code from some very smart people was a very interesting experience for me I felt that I was missing the design and idea-involvement. By this time a good friend of me from my class asked me if I was interested in working for Blast Radius in Hamburg as a designer. Since I haven't been with my friends and family for a long time since nearly 3 years I was very glad about this offer and took the job.

I was the only creative in a team of 4 and even though it was stressful and very challenging being at the source and able to develop my own ideas is very satisfying for me.
What was less satisfying for me though was the fact that my girlfriend lives in London and that being seperated from her is not so much fun.
After 8 months of working at Blast I feel now that I have to move on and find another challenge so this is why I made this Portfolio for you to see if you are interested in hiring me.

If you want to, you can contact me via
email: nlyden@googlemail.com or
skype: nicolailyden.

See you soon! Read Less