Meet Gabrielle Green

Hello and welcome to my first GROW blog. My name is Gabrielle Green. I am a 34 year-old graphic designer who usually works for Weldon Owen in Sydney.

At Weldon Owen (WO), I work exclusively in book design. Weldon Owen creates illustrated reference books geared towards children and family.  Some common subjects would be dinosaurs, volcanoes, trees, insects and spiders, animals, birds, weather and sea.

During an average day, I work with an editor to create a book with a team of external suppliers—picture researchers, cartographers, information graphic specialists and illustrators. Illustrations are commissioned to add to Weldon Owen's extensive archive of artwork, which is used and reused for various projects. The high quality and beautiful aesthetics of the work is in my opinion what makes WO Sydney stand out.

During busy periods, largely associated with book fairs, editorial teams switch to producing new material for sales purposes. New concepts for book covers and sample pages are put together in various presentation formats. This is generally one of the more energetic and creative parts of my job.

It is difficult to explain my expectations of what my time with Bonnier Fakta, in Stockholm, will be like. It has been hard to comprehend how I would manage working in a company where the language is not my own. So far my biggest challenges have been learning and correctly pronouncing as many colleagues' names as possible, and getting in and out of the building without getting lost. I have been overwhelmed by the beautiful workplace, the differences in work culture, and the ease to which I have adjusted to the language challenges. Having said that, I still I accept that Google translate will become my closest work companion.

This is my first visit to Scandinavia. I expect my blogs to focus on the cultural differences I am experiencing, the highlights (such as the moose at Skansen) and perhaps some of the frustrations at living nine hours behind my friends and family who are physically on the other side of the world.