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Hello, I’m Milla

Having run a successful corporate design agency for the past 20 years, I have had the opportunity to create, nourish and manage large visual brand identities on an international scale. I believe design is one of a company’s vital competitive assets which can play an essential role in its success. Working with exceptional clients and skillful teams to produce admirable real life projects has been remarkable. Together, we have achieved our goals, and also at times exceeded them.

I was born 1980 in Finland and consider myself culturally a millennial. I grew up in the countryside, but at the age of 16 years I moved to Helsinki to study at Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Arts. Childhood in the countryside made me ecologically aware as well as respectful for the beauty of nature. I am a mother of two adorable little boys and wife of a rocket scientist.

My colleagues, friends and family have described me as positive, inspiring, encouraging, creative, courageous and precise. I believe in a systematic ideation process, design thinking, visual functionality and I greatly value co-creativity as well as group wisdom. Design Museum Helsinki has exhibited Ideaspector, a tool for systematic ideation process, that was part of my final thesis about creativity.

I believe greatest results can be achieved in creative freedom, requiring trust, collaboration and well-informed courage. I am determined and encourage the entire team towards the best possible creative result. Walking the extra mile  – or sometimes more – like once for one project literally driving 150 miles (240km) in a snowstorm late in the evening – can make a huge difference.

I love exploring, experimenting, ocean, creativity, art, colours, music, reading, well made things and culture in most of its forms. I’m also inspired by nature, people, observing trends, found objects, non-intentional compositions, interesting typography in unusual places, yoga and travelling.

Portrait by photographer Heli Sorjonen. All other pictures by me except for the picture next to the red peonies, that is from Ideaspector-workshop, by photographer Arsi Ikäheimonen.