about me

LauraJane Reilly (pronunciation: LAW-ruhJAYN RY-lee; born 31 October 1983) is an American artist known for her design and illustration work, often in the realm of advertising. Schooled formally in print and digital, her career has been geared toward visual communication. Her design style is often precise, simplified versions of complex ideas. Her illustrations run the gamut of aesthetics, stylistically adjusting to the tone that needs to be conveyed.

Early Career

Laura in 1986.

From the ripe age of 3, she learned how to crawl into her father's desk chair and figured out how to play on his Commodore computer. She played Barbie and Hot Wheels games, mostly. Later came the Packard Bell and AOL in the 90s and she found herself dabbling in the newly born Photoshop app. She made herself animations in Nickelodeon Director's Lab. She built sites in Angel Fire. She made music videos in Flash.

Aside from her computer skills, she took up ballet for almost a whole month and started her first job when she was 7. She sold lipstick door-to-door with her mom who was a well-known "Avon Lady." This was her first foray into sales. She's loved working ever since.

Work as a Young Adult
Though working a wide array of day jobs to financially support herself, some in creative positions, some not, she always at least freelanced in the arts. Her first design job was exchanging a logo design for a haircut. Various other roles included caricatures, airbrushing, theater direction, creative team management, interior design, wedding planning, tattoo illustrations, building websites, and consulting on corporate branding. She also fixed woodwind instruments and taught music on the side so she could save up for a guitar (which she did end up buying and it was totally awesome).

Laura spent six years in college. The first three were at a community school where she learned about Cultural Anthropology and general studies, gaining an Associates in Psychology and Liberal Arts. She never lost sight of her art though. The last three years of college were spent at Rowan University. There she won awards for her book designs and advertisements for school functions. The intensive curriculum resulted in a Bachelor's of the Arts, but she continued on in her studies, becoming a member of the first class offered a specialized degree -- Bachelor's of Fine Art with a specialization in Graphic Design and Illustration.

Moving to Pennsylvania
After graduating, she worked at media agencies and freelanced in design and photography, but paid the bills selling computers and cameras in south Jersey. Having her heart set on building a career devoted to her passion, she became a designer at a social media website, MyYearbook (now The Meet Group). She moved to Pennsylvania in 2008 to be closer to their home office.

With the world of technology constantly evolving, so did her career path. She went from a website designer to an advertising designer in both mobile as well as web. She traversed the quickly emerging online advertising industry working with hundreds of major advertising companies. After a couple of years, she became a Senior Designer. A few more after that, a Creative Director. With a Scrum Master certification and extensive Agile training, she ascended to a Senior Director of Ad Products. She built an extensive network of creative agencies, working directly between clients and her sales team. She worked with top brands and famous celebrities. She continues to work in advertising even now, at the same company for over a decade.

Laura with Alfonso Ribeiro (aka Carlton Banks)

Present Day
In addition to her day job, she works on a lot of her own creative art projects. She's run photo challenges for professionals and amateurs, encouraging the creation of hundreds of photographs throughout the years. She's trained photographers, led photo walks, and taught Adobe Lightroom to individuals and groups. She's taught visual layouts of the unique planner techniques called Bullet Journals. She's participated in global art challenges like Inktober and Mermay where artists have to complete a themed illustration every day for a month. Also, she ran her own public visual journal challenge she called the "Tile Journal" for over 100 days. The "Tile Journal" consisted of square vector graphics she created in Adobe Illustrator and shared on Instagram every day for over 3 months. She's currently in the process of learning frame-by-frame hand drawn animation, Procreate app for iPad Pro, and motion graphics in After Effects.

You can often find her latest artistic endeavors on her Instagram. She continues to seek out new creative minds and projects.

Need more information? Download my resume below.

RESUME

Are you looking for something a bit more robust?

I've made an introductory PDF so you can learn a little more about me and view some samples of my portfolio work.

INTRODUCTION PDF

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Born

LauraJane Reilly
31 Oct. 1983 - (present)
Lakewood, NJ

Education

Rowan University
BFA Graphic Design and Illustration

Known for

Graphic Design
Illustration