Consuelo Ruybal: A Graphic Designer with her Head in the Cloud
By: Chelsé Craig Consuelo Ruybal (BA 92) considers herself lucky to have been working the design industry since the early 90s after graduating from Eastern with her degree in visual and graphic design. She currently works for Pitney Bowes, the 95-year-old paper-mailing company that now specializes in Cloud Commerce and has become a vital part of the digital ecosystem. Based out of New York, Consuelo is responsible for making sure the company’s custom-built, internal software infrastructure works to the best of its ability, so that it can enable Twitter to assign locations, allow eBay’s customers to buy and sell goods, and more.
Consuelo Ruybal graduated from ENMU with a Bachelor of Arts in visual and graphic design. Photo by: Meg Allen
“It’s a funny story on how I was signed on,” she said. “I had just sent out a message to my network saying
She has worked in visual and graphic design, and now
that I was available and ready for work. A few hours
as a user-experience (UX) designer and/or creative
later, I received a phone call requesting my attendance
consultant for company giants such as Elle magazine,
for a 10 a.m. meeting the next day. I had to be willing to
Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, IBM and others.
accept the position without knowing anything about
Consuelo has received
the project, and the words ‘high-profile’ and ‘very
several awards on
exciting’ were thrown around.”
various projects,
Consuelo signed non-disclosure agreement contracts
including Cannes Lions
and spent months creating a conceptual model that
International Advertising
would release every page of Jay-Z’s autobiography
Festival’s Cyber Silver,
out in the real world and have fans reassemble those
Titanium, and Integrated
pages online in the interactive game. She also spent
Grand Prix awards for her
time writing the game logic and designing the user
work as a user experience
experience without talking about it to anyone.
strategist and designer on a Bing.com project called DECODE Jay-Z.
“Professional designers add value to their work by removing themselves from their designs,” she said. “I add value by removing myself and making sure I listen to my customers. My best designs are always in the style of the end client.”
“My friends, however, commented that I suddenly knew a lot more about hip-hop than ever before,” she quipped. Consuelo also co-founded RightRides for Women’s Safety, a nonprofit organization that offers rides from trained volunteers throughout high-risk areas in New York City. The company was created in order to build safer communities by ending gender-based harassment and sexual assault through direct services, intervention, safety education and policy advocacy. “It was a passion-project that I helped run while working a full-time corporate job and it was successful in helping people get home safe late at night. It received a lot of recognition and awards. I’m very proud of it.”
Consuelo currently lives in New York and was recently photographed for her street style. Photo by: Curtis Xin Pan, Instagram @curtispan
Green & Silver | April 2018
11
