The pro­duc­tion design­er who finds inspi­ra­tion on the open road

This sto­ry is part of Cre­ative Resilience, an edi­to­r­i­al series pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Square­space.

“I’ve always had a sense of adven­ture,” says Malin Lind­holm. Orig­i­nal­ly from Swe­den, the pro­duc­tion design­er has rarely stood still since grad­u­at­ing from Stock­holm Uni­ver­si­ty in the ear­ly 1990s. Over the course of her plus 20-year career she’s hop­scotched from city to city, tak­ing time off in between jobs to quench her thirst for trav­el­ling. Indeed, when we speak to Malin, she’s en route to a friend’s house in a small vil­lage in Bul­gar­ia for an impromp­tu get­away. It’s the first time she’s been able to trav­el for over five months, hav­ing been ground­ed (like the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple) due to COVID-19, and it’s plain to see she’s excit­ed to be hit­ting the road again.

“I love to trav­el,” she explains, ​“and I do a lot of trav­el­ling par­tic­u­lar­ly in between jobs. There was a time when I had more down­time and I was able to go away for longer, but on a film or TV series you can be work­ing solid­ly for six or sev­en months, so it’s real­ly impor­tant to make time to go away and switch off from every­thing. If I go on a reg­u­lar hol­i­day and just lie on the beach then I find it hard to dis­con­nect. If I go a bit more off the beat­en track and immerse myself in a new cul­ture and set off on an adven­ture, with very lit­tle planned, then that allows me to real­ly give my brain a rest. It can be exhaust­ing trav­el­ling that way, but it’s more relax­ing in terms of it being eas­i­er to step away from work.”

Occa­sion­al­ly, Malin’s wan­der­lust and work inter­sect. In 2017 she teamed up with the British-Zam­bian film­mak­er Rungano Nyoni to make the daz­zling social dra­ma I Am Not a Witch, which was shot on loca­tion in south­ern Africa and went on to win the BAF­TA for Out­stand­ing Debut by a British Writer, Direc­tor or Pro­duc­er. For Malin, who took on the role of art direc­tor, the film pro­vid­ed a dif­fer­ent kind of challenge.

“It was a very organ­ic way of work­ing,” she recalls. ​“We didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly stick to our assigned roles because we were a very small crew and we were film­ing in an envi­ron­ment where there real­ly is no film indus­try; we had to work with what was there. Nor­mal­ly you set up an art depart­ment and work with teams who are used to their roles and come on board to meet a spe­cif­ic cre­ative need. I Am Not a Witch was an excep­tion in that sense – we had very lim­it­ed resources but it was a great adven­ture and a very enjoy­able way of working.”

Like so many cre­atives, Malin’s liveli­hood has been adverse­ly affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic, but cru­cial­ly she’s man­aged to find ways to stay pro­duc­tive. Dur­ing the ear­ly stages of lock­down – when hit­ting the open road had anoth­er mean­ing – she took to draw­ing the emp­ty streets and build­ings in her neigh­bour­hood in east Lon­don. She would grab a cam­era and take pic­tures on her dai­ly des­ig­nat­ed walk, then ren­der the images on her iPad using Pro­cre­ate, a dig­i­tal paint­ing pro­gramme she first start­ed using for work a few years ago. ​“I decid­ed to treat the lock­down as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice and build up my draw­ing skills,” she says. ​“It was the best thing at the begin­ning when it was real­ly qui­et and there was no one around. It was eerie, see­ing almost no peo­ple around, and it was just some­thing I felt I need­ed to document.”

One thing Malin has found time for dur­ing lock­down is build­ing a new web­site. ​“I already had a Square­space site for my inte­ri­or design work,” she says, ​“so I knew it was a very user-friend­ly plat­form. I want­ed to keep it sim­ple and take all the mate­r­i­al from my old web­site and add some new and updat­ed mate­r­i­al from my pro­duc­tion design work. I’d nev­er had all my work in one place before, and Square­space makes it so easy to gath­er every­thing togeth­er and cre­ate an online port­fo­lio.” This in turn has giv­en her more time to hone her skills and focus on the cre­ative build­ing blocks which were a cru­cial ele­ment of this commission.

Get cre­ative with your own Square­space site

By spend­ing more time tak­ing in her sur­round­ings, Malin has been able to work on her men­tal well­be­ing too. ​“This whole expe­ri­ence has actu­al­ly been very healthy for me,” she reflects. ​“For the last five or so years it has been pret­ty much non stop, work­ing back-to-back jobs. I used to do a lot of small­er gigs – com­mer­cials and music videos – where­as now I most­ly do TV series which can be very time-con­sum­ing and drain­ing. The pan­dem­ic has been tough in many ways, but it’s been good for me to not work and instead just enjoy being at home. Before, I wasn’t mak­ing time for draw­ing out­side of work – now I’m tak­ing pho­tos and draw­ing just for the plea­sure of it. I tend to look for moments, often sit­u­a­tions that are quite filmic. I take a lot of inspi­ra­tion from geo­met­ric shapes and unusu­al, uncon­ven­tion­al archi­tec­ture, which I sup­pose is why I’ve main­ly been draw­ing build­ings around London.”

By her own admis­sion Malin has always been some­thing of a rest­less soul, con­stant­ly drawn to new places and new expe­ri­ences. New York, Paris, Tel Aviv, Lon­don: all pit stops on her jour­ney to real­is­ing her pro­fes­sion­al dream. So although she’s found solace in her sur­round­ings more recent­ly, you get the sense that wher­ev­er her work takes her in future she’ll always seek out the path less trav­elled. ​“Pro­duc­tion design is all about cre­at­ing emo­tions around a space, and I love the free­dom that you get on small­er, low-bud­get projects, espe­cial­ly when it’s some­where unfa­mil­iar. It’s more hands-on and you’ve got to make mag­ic with what you have.”

Malin Lind­holm and all of the cre­atives fea­tured in our Cre­ative Resilience series use Square­space as an easy and afford­able web­site builder to get their work out there in a beau­ti­ful way. If you’re think­ing of shar­ing your own vision with the world, start build­ing your Square­space web­site today with a free tri­al – no cred­it card required! Use the dis­count code LWLies when you’re ready to go live.

Read more sto­ries from our series on Cre­ative Resilience, in part­ner­ship with Squarespace.