Christina Sollenberg Britton

I was born in Boliden in Northern Sweden. My father was a mining engineer so our family spent my childhood moving between a number of cold and grim mining towns. I was a very serious and dedicated young girl, and determined to become a doctor when, during a year as an exchange student in Pennsylvania, a charismatic art teacher inspired me to explore my artistic talents instead. I eventually moved to Stockholm where I was accepted onto the advertising & graphic design programme at the famous Beckmans College of Design. After graduation, I was hired as the first employee at Intellecta advertising and media agency, where I worked for six years as art director, with advertising as well as with corporate magazine publishing and other projects, many of them well ahead of their time. I was then recruited to become the founding editor-in-chief of the new men’s fashion magazine Café, first published in 1990 by Rosenudde, where I also served as temporary editor-in-chief of Café’s internationally renowned ”big sister”, women’s fashion magazine CliC. At Rosenudde, I met my husband to be, Claes, at Rosenudde. We resigned in 1991 to start Stockholm New magazine and the BrittonBritton creative agency together.

Aside from my roles as editor-in-chief at Stockholm New and creative director at BrittonBritton, I’ve been a teacher at my old school Beckmans College of Design for seventeen years, eleven of these as class teacher in the advertising & graphic design programme. During this long era, I’ve had the uniquely rewarding privilege of educating a large number of highly talented young professionals and wonderful human beings who are now pursuing successful careers not just in advertising and graphic design, but in a wide variety of creative fields — and not just in Sweden, but around the world. Due to work overload, I was forced to resign as class teacher a few years ago, which was a painful decision for me, as the school will always occupy a large part of my heart. I still maintain a strong bond with Beckmans of course, I always will, and I still teach as a guest teacher.