About

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”
— Terry PRATCHETT, Witches abroad

Blocks of Coral (form a castle) is the home of Mathias Gullbrandson. From here Mathias takes initiatives and co-create projects, products or processes. Everything is about participation through immersive events & digital experiences, with the purpose of getting stories alive.

Blocks of Coral (form a castle) took root in a vacuum after giving management advices, producing games, doing a tech-start-up and designing services for almost 20 years. During these years a skill for designing structures for co-creation, co-production and collaboration have emerged, but also a conviction that something bigger, more important can be done.

Mathias have been working with change & innovation since early 90-ties with story, game and design as tools to create live experiences.

From being active in the environmental movement he turned into the business of Art & Entertainment 1997 working with film and game production, with international known directors such as Josef Fares and Mikael Håfström (nominated for the best foreign language film Evil 2003).

2001 Mathias co-founded the Service design agency The Story Lab with Cordial Business advisors and Katarina Björk. During more than 10 years he was working with national and international change and innovation programs for both private and public sector, for example Volvo, AGA, Vodafone and Health Care organisations.

The Story Lab® was later sold to Dentsu Aegis Media. During 2011–2013 he worked part-time as a Senior Service designer at Engine Service Design in London and initiated a number of digital products and services. One was the computer game Brothers - tale of two sons (awarded with 50 international achievements among them a Bafta for the most innovative game 2013). Another was Dreamler - a visual planning and collaboration tool, with 10 co-workers where Mathias have been the CEO from 2012–2016 and CVO and product owner 2017-2020.

Mathias have a MA in Cultural and Creative Leadership from Portsmouth University and love to read research within system thinking, design thinking and cognition.