Rachele Riley
Education
MFA Design | Visual Communication, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 2005.
Vordiplom Communication Design, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, Halle, Germany, 2001.
BS Studio Art, New York University, New York, NY, 1994.
Biography and Creative Research Activity
Rachele Riley is an artist, graphic designer, and educator whose research explores visual representations of conflict; poetics of land/water, movement, language, and body; and the material systems of archives. Her focus is typographics, letter forms and type design, image-making and digital collage, interaction and motion design, and visual data. Riley has received the 2026–2027 Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award and will be working in Glasgow, Scotland in Spring 2027. She was awarded a Research Assignment from UNCG for the Fall 2026–Spring 2027 academic year to work on her independent book project and to pursue her Fulbright project. Riley’s creative work has been recognized by The Webby Awards, Communication Arts Magazine, AIGA Philadelphia, Print Magazine, and the DigitalGlobe Foundation. Before joining the UNCG School of Art in 2017, Riley taught design at the University of the Arts, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently Associate Professor of New Media and Design at UNCG, and is based in Durham, NC.
Subjects Taught
- New Media and Design
Scholarly Creative/Research Activity
Rachele Riley is the recipient of the 2026–2027 Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award. She will be working and living in Scotland in 2027 and affiliated with the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Design. Her Fulbright project, “World Wide Water: Visualizing the Dynamics of Water, Letterforms, and Space” will involve research into water stories, ecologies, mythologies, technologies, phenomena and the expression of identity and letterform design in urban and rural area in Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands. She will be creating a visual mapping and multimedia image series exploring global, local, and personal experiences of water; visualizing water words, documenting water spaces, and taking design inspiration from water flow and water qualities.
Riley is also currently working on a book component to her project, “The Evolution of Silence,” which explores the impact of forty-one years of post-WWII nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. “The Evolution of Silence, Version 1” was named an Official Honoree in NetArt by The Webby Awards (2014); was recognized by AIGA Philadelphia Design Awards (2017), and is included in the exhibition and catalog, Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural (Actar Publisher, 2022). Riley’s graphic design work has been recognized by Communication Arts Magazine (Typography Annual 2018), Print Magazine’s Design Regional (2008), and is featured in the book, Motion Design (Rotovision/Woolman, 2004).
Riley has presented, published, and exhibited her work in national and international settings—at Artist Replete Gallery in Chicago, IL (2024); 1708 Gallery’s InLight21 in Richmond, VA (2021); Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York (2019); the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, NC (2018); the Baltic Centre in Gateshead, UK (2013); SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Canada (2014), among other venues. Riley has collaborated, presented, and exhibited with Daniel McCafferty and Joshua Singer as part of Different Data, a project that explores design and change in cities. She served on the Board of Directors for Design Inquiry (DI), a conference-alternative design research organization, from 2013–2015—during which time she co-framed the DI:DesignCity project in Detroit, MI.
Riley has received research funding from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, University of the Arts, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and UNCG. She was awarded an Imagery Grant from the DigitalGlobe Foundation and a grant from Hatchfund, both in support of “The Evolution of Silence” project. She has been Artist-in-Residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and a participant in Design Inquiry’s Vinalhaven, ME residencies and a collective DI residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). In 2025, she participated in “Summer School: Landscape (post) Conflict” research residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.