Profile

Lorena is a Mexican-American designer based in Austin, Texas.

She runs a small publishing house, Salted Caramel Books, specializing in books for Spanish-speaking kids that live in English-speaking countries. She is adjunct faculty at Centro, a school of design, film and television in Mexico City, where she conducts an experimental workshop in which the participants explore the intersection between research and the creative process.

Lorena majored in Graphic Design in Mexico City, and went to Basel School of Design for a degree in visual communication. Shortly after that she started dividing her time between teaching and designing, and living between Mexico City and the US. (She often refers to her years in New England as “a second MFA”). She’s taught a variety of foundation courses such as composition, color and type, along with Information Design and History of Graphic Design.

Since she was in college, Lorena tried her luck in different fields (advertisement, illustration, commercial film, magazine design and even some brief journalism) before settling for Graphic Identity and Publishing Design, and has collaborated with cultural institutions including The House of Mexico in Paris and the Octavio Paz Foundation, as well as university presses including Rochester University Press and the UP at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.

As an addition to her typography courses, Lorena has lectured internationally on the subject of Vernacular Mexican Lettering, and published the book Sideway Glances.

Lorena’s work has been recognized by Quorum (Mexico), BoNE (Best of New England) and Independent Publisher Awards.

 

Education

MFA - Visual Communication | Basel School of Design

BA - Graphic Design | Universidad Iberoamericana

Selected work

Nikki Juen

Faculty, MFA in Graphic Design

Ramon Tejada

Visiting Faculty, MFA in Graphic Design

Silas Munro

Faculty Co-Chair, MFA in Graphic Design

Ian Lynam

Faculty, MFA in Graphic Design

David Schatz

Faculty, MFA in Graphic Design

Natalia Ilyin

Faculty, MFA in Graphic Design