Alexa Llerenas
Always curious
Collaborative by nature
Storyteller at heart
About
I’m a multidisciplinary graphic designer based in the Bay Area, working across visual systems, storytelling, and identity. I approach each project with curiosity, treating research as a starting point and experimentation as a way to uncover unexpected solutions. I’m drawn to the relationship between structure and expression, using design to organize information, communicate stories, and create moments of connection.
Design Process
- Listen | Understand people, context, and problem.
- Investigate | Foundation of visual decisions.
- Translate
|
Complex ideas into clear visual language.
- Refine
|
Iterate, question, and edit.
Contact Me
itsalellere@gmail.com
LinkedIn
Instagram
Katherine D. Harris
Collection
This project developed a visual identity and digital bookplate for the KDH Collection, a collection of 83 nineteenth-century literary volumes that have been digitized and made freely accessible through the Internet Archive.
The collection brings together poetry, drama, essays, and engravings that once served as portable forms of literature and art, making culture more accessible beyond the walls of museums and private collections.
Visual Research
The project initially began as a book cover for Dr. Harris’s annual Forget Me Not publication. To develop a visual direction, I researched Victorian material culture, craft, imagery, iconography, and the metaphors associated with the period, looking for ways to reinterpret familiar Victorian symbols rather than reproduce them literally.
As the project evolved, the final deliverable shifted from a book cover to a brandmark and bookplate for the Katherine D. Harris Collection. Although the format changed, the initial research remained the foundation for the visual identity.
Imagery shown is used for research and reference purposes and is not original work.
Typographic & Visual Explorations
I explored ways to subvert traditional Victorian imagery and ideas of femininity, using the research as a foundation for language centered around nature, ornament, strength, and freedom. The resulting identity centers on an open golden cage and a bird, representing the collection’s movement from private, physical books into an open and accessible digital archive.
Expanding Identity & Iteration
Iterations of the bird, key, and bookplate explored how the collection’s themes of freedom, access, and Victorian symbolism could translate into a flexible visual system.
Identity in Context
The final identity system brings together the open gilded cage, bird, and key to create a visual language centered on freedom, access, and the subversion of traditional Victorian ideals. These elements were applied across print, library, and digital materials, including the bookplate, Internet Archive logo, signage, bookmarks, posters, pins, and window decal. Together, the applications create a cohesive identity that connects the historical collection to its new life as an open and accessible digital archive.