Tuija Kuusela: Princesses and princess cakes

The content of the work at Bonnierförlagen has been quite familiar to me, because it's very similar to the work I'm used to do at Tammi Publishers. From the very beginning I've been entrusted challenging and diverse tasks: cover designs for both fiction and non-fiction books, typografical inner layouts for non-fiction titles and even some illustrations (an area I almost had forgot in Finland because of the lack of time).

Although one of my fears in this world is that the cosy, warm and beautiful printed book will disappear forever, it has been rousing to be along with Bonnierförlagen's e-book and pod-book (print-on-demand) launching project. A point of view is also to see the e-book as a design challenge. The main question here for a designer is what kind of visual form that can be created for the e-book format and how to realize it technically.

The absolutely most fascinating and funniest work has been a wedding calendar. Both the Swedish princesses has got engaged this year and of course the wedding plans are already going on. At Bonnier Fakta we hope and predict a wedding boom preoccupying the whole of Sweden... The wedding calendar is meant to help to plan one's own wedding and it's going to be a nice mixture of a notebook and a scrap book with an attractive look.

I like to work with Swedes because they are very thorough and cooperation orientated. For me this kind of intensiveness between an editor and a graphic designer is exceptional. We're planning, analyzing alternatives and making decisions together thus also sharing the responsibility of the design.

The sense of communality can also be seen in the importance of common coffee breaks (often with a cake, most preferably a princess cake). An exception to the style of cake was the day when I arrived: a flattering gesture was that my new supervisor had baked a traditional Finnish-style blueberry pie to wish me welcome.