work
[ Poster Exhibits ]
Women on the Record: The Past, Present, and Future of Women Who Have Shaped SOM
For Women’s History Month, I worked with three other members of SOM’s Women’s Initiative to create Women on the Record: The Past, Present, and Future of Women Who Have Shaped SOM, a six-poster exhibition spotlighting SOM women whose contributions to the firm’s history and present-day practice have not always been as visibly documented. Developed in collaboration with SOM’s librarian and archivist, the project brought together research on historic women leaders and current Chicago-based SOMers, translating archival work into a public-facing installation within the office.
As the Women’s Initiative Graphic Design and Branding Chair, I led the full design direction and execution of the poster series and accompanying digital screens, from image selection and layout to typography, color, and overall pacing. I balanced SOM’s established brand standards with the Women’s Initiative’s purple and pink visual identity, creating a system that felt refined, celebratory, and distinct while still rooted in the firm’s visual language. Displayed in a highly trafficked gathering space throughout March, the exhibition became part of the office’s Women’s History Month programming and gave colleagues a visible way to learn from and connect with the women who have shaped SOM.
For Women’s History Month, I worked with three other members of SOM’s Women’s Initiative to create Women on the Record: The Past, Present, and Future of Women Who Have Shaped SOM, a six-poster exhibition spotlighting SOM women whose contributions to the firm’s history and present-day practice have not always been as visibly documented. Developed in collaboration with SOM’s librarian and archivist, the project brought together research on historic women leaders and current Chicago-based SOMers, translating archival work into a public-facing installation within the office.
As the Women’s Initiative Graphic Design and Branding Chair, I led the full design direction and execution of the poster series and accompanying digital screens, from image selection and layout to typography, color, and overall pacing. I balanced SOM’s established brand standards with the Women’s Initiative’s purple and pink visual identity, creating a system that felt refined, celebratory, and distinct while still rooted in the firm’s visual language. Displayed in a highly trafficked gathering space throughout March, the exhibition became part of the office’s Women’s History Month programming and gave colleagues a visible way to learn from and connect with the women who have shaped SOM.
University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus: Design History in Images
For Concrete Culture: Chicago and Beyond, a two-day UIC conference exploring the cultural, ecological, and architectural significance of concrete, I worked with SOM’s librarian and archivist to create a poster set titled University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus: Design History in Images. The 20-poster exhibition revisited SOM’s role in shaping UIC’s original Cir
cle Campus in the 1960s and 1970s, drawing from archival photography, drawings, diagrams, and technical documentation to show how concrete helped define the campus’s urban and architectural identity. The exhibition was developed alongside SOM structural engineer Benton Johnson’s participation in the conference’s “What We Might Do” panel, which focused on future trajectories of concrete.
My role was to lead the creative direction and design of the full large-format poster series for display at the conference reception. Working from a broad archive of historic material, I developed the opening timeline, selected and paired images, and shaped the pacing across the set so the posters could function as both documentation and visual storytelling. With limited written text, the design relied on scale, sequence, and contrast—placing technical drawings beside more atmospheric campus views—to make the history accessible without flattening its complexity. Displayed for a public university audience, the exhibition offered a visual point of entry into a campus history that has partially disappeared, creating space for reflection on SOM’s legacy and the evolving role of concrete in Chicago architecture.
