Alune Stories: Kaylee Reynolds

1) What’s something that you think defines you well to someone who doesn’t know you? It could be a characteristic, a hobby, or an interest.

I am a creative, through and through! Having grown up as a dancer, my passion for dance has profoundly influenced my life and continues to shape my personal and professional creative pursuits. Inspired by movement, my art is informed by personal experiences that drive the conceptual ideas in my work. This in turn, informs the narratives and creative solutions that I craft in my design work. The unique intersection of creativity in its various forms across different areas in my life inspires me to create work that is both deeply personal and universally impactful.

2) Can you tell us a bit about your career in design?

Taking cues from my background as an artist, I leverage my skills across brand and marketing design, illustration, and animation, to bring concepts and ideas to life, across visual design assets, marketing collateral, and multi-channel integrated campaigns. Thus far, I’ve spent my design career working in the tech space, combining creative marketing with data insights, to drive results and solve business problems in thoughtfully designed ways.

3) How would you define design? What does it mean to you?

I would define design as art that solves problems, art turned functional if you will.

I love the pursuit of creating something—anything, that has a meaningful impact on people’s lives. For me, it has often been hard to separate what art and design each mean to me, but I think Rasmus Wängelin, the Global Head of Brand Design at Spotify put it best!

“I love the intersection of the emotion you get from looking at art, and the functionality that design gives you. When these two worlds come together, you create the best work.”

4) Is there a project in your portfolio that you particularly enjoyed working on and would like to share with us?

In 2024, I completed a passion project, which I called Planit—a digital planning solution.

The challenge I set for myself was to build and establish a brand for Planit that conveys empathy and compassion in an engaging and transformative way. Under the central idea, “Dream It, Note It, Plan It”, the solution was an visual identity with vibrant colour and character that creates a synergistic relationship between product and brand, and conveys the engaging nature of the brand’s personality.

I enjoyed this project because for me it was an opportunity to inject my personal creative approaches into all aspects of the brand building process from the strategy, to the visual language, and the product itself, with no limitations. For a fictional project, I poured hours and hours of effort into it, but in the end, it was very fulfilling!

Here’s the full case study: https://kayleereynolds.com/planit

5) Could you share a reference, an inspiration, or something you really admire in your field?

On the art side, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jade Purple Brown, Natasha Cunningham, Alexis Franklin, are just a few creatives whose work I admire. They all demonstrate a high-level craft in their work, and each of them stand out to me for a number of reasons, from the way they tell stories to what their work stands for. 

On the design side, Koto’s newsletter “Off-Brand” is a great point of reference, it’s packed with actionable creative insights on various aspects of the branding process.

6) As a former student at the school, could you share a bit about your experience and what you enjoyed most?

I took the Bridging Strategy & Design course with Alex Anderson, which was incredibly insightful, and I would recommend it to designers and strategists alike. Throughout the course, I developed a deeper understanding of brand strategy, as informed by history and culture, and guided by research and user perception. 

What I enjoyed the most was the final presentations, which challenged us to strategically assess the cultural relevance of real world brands of our choice. It was great to see everyone’s unique takeaways, in the way that they applied the learnings from the course. 

Overall, the course pushed me to step into the mind of a strategist, to better understand how design and strategy overlap.

Follow Kaylee Reynolds on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit her website.

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A View on Design: with Victor Belinatti, Design Lead at Work&Co

Meet Julia B. Aguiar & Carlos Bocai — instructors of the Decoding Identities course.