ABOUT

THE PATH THAT LED ME HERE

My name is Pernilla Appelros. I was born on an autumn day in 1987, a season painted in gold and crimson, alive with wind and light. Autumn has always felt like my element, the time when everything glows before it changes. Maybe that’s why creativity has always come so naturally to me. Transformation, color, and emotion have been part of my language since the beginning. As a little girl, I could spend hours drawing and painting, completely lost in the worlds I created. Art wasn’t just a hobby, it was how I understood life.

I grew up in the countryside of Skåne in Sweden, surrounded by open fields between Helsingborg and Landskrona. Life there wasn’t always calm, the winds could shift and storms would come and go, just like in any family full of life. I grew up surrounded by animals, parents and two siblings. Amid laughter, chaos, and the rhythm of everyday moments, I learned to listen and to feel deeply. That’s where my empathy grew, from the noise, the laughter, and the storms of family life, teaching me to see with both heart and eyes. 

In high school, I studied media and discovered a new form of storytelling. At a small local radio station called Radio A, I learned how communication could move people. How sound, words, and emotion could come together to tell a story. That’s where my love for media truly began. After graduation, I searched for what felt truly mine. I worked in different roles, explored different paths, and eventually studied Linguistic Communication, fascinated by how language connects us. That curiosity led me to teaching, a career I embraced for twelve years,  especially through the subject closest to my heart: art. I trained and became a certified teacher in several subjects, but it was always the creative ones that made me feel most alive. I was passionate about helping children explore how images communicate, how color and form can tell a story when words fall short. Through painting, drawing, and shaping clay, I encouraged them to reflect the world around them. To understand life by creating it anew on paper. Watching them discover their own voices through art was one of the most beautiful parts of my journey.  Teaching gave me perspective, empathy, and the joy of helping others find their voice. But over time, something inside me grew quiet. The structure of the school system could no longer give me what I longed for and I, in return, could no longer give it more of myself.  

So I needed to listen.

I went back to my roots, to creativity, to design, to media. Thats when Design by Appelros was borned. The place where ideas take shape and emotion meets expression. Through UX design, visual storytelling, and art, I found my way back to myself. Today, I create to connect. To design experiences that feel human where color, empathy, and communication come together with purpose. My work is about more than visuals. It’s about evoking something real. Because creativity, for me, has never just been what I do. It’s who I am.