Meet Beatrice Hellman

Beatrice Hellman has worked magazine design for 10 years. She normally works as art director for Damernas Värld, a job that requires planning the magazine together with other editorial staff, assigning illustrators and photographers and overseeing the overall layout of the magazine.

In the beginning of September, Hellman flew to the other side of the world - to Sydney, Australia. There she works as a designer for book publisher Weldon Owen during three intensive GROW months.

"Among other things, I've worked with the Discovery Education series, 64 illustrated books about science, history and nature," Hellman says. "It's exciting, and you learn so many new facts every day! I've also worked with the design of new books and was lucky to come in right before the Frankfurt Book Fair. Everyone worked hard to prepare material for that."

Hellman is impressed with Weldon Owen's huge library and the beautiful detailed illustrations that designers get to choose among when they work with books. And she says that there's plenty of room for discussion.

"As a designer at Weldon Owen you have a lot of responsibility for making sure the design looks good, so new thoughts and ideas are welcome."

What is most fun for Hellman is being in another country and speaking another language that she's not used to.

"I work closely with the editors and other designers," Hellman says. "The wealth of ideas and experiences they have has made everything really educational. It's a creative publisher! And to get the chance to do this in a sunny country like Australia is amazingly fun."

The company culture and work processes aren't so different from those in Sweden, Hellman says. What is different is the tempo.

"It's a completely different time frame than what I'm used to having," she says. "The detail work, editing and typography take much more time. And it's a relatively small company so pretty much everyone works together. It's true teamwork, exactly like creating a magazine!"