Ruby Glenister

Ruby Glenister is a Naarm-based communication designer and illustrator. She has a Bachelor of Design and majored in Communication.

Ruby is passionate about telling human stories. She is a perceptive, detail-oriented designer who specialises in adding a handcrafted touch to her projects.

Ruby is particularly adept at illustration, branding, publication, and packaging design. With freelance experience and a passion for research, she has an excellent understanding of both audience and client needs.

Ruby is constantly inspired by design and art history and wishes to utilise her knowledge to create a better future through social design. She brings a marked combination of creativity and strategic insight to every project.

In her spare time, Ruby can be found exploring museums and galleries, reading, crafting, or bouldering. Whatever it is, Ruby loves to engage in creative thinking and problem-solving, being dedicated to lifelong learning.

Soup Group Charity: Campaign

A charity that supports people experiencing food insecurity with meals and mental health support. Ruby developed branding and a promotional campaign for the charity’s new community centre with the intention of hope-based communication. Highlighting the charity’s positive and supportive environment was achieved through an original bold logo font reminiscent of bowl shapes, a bright warm colour palette and rounded graphics. Ruby has championed the charity’s goal of eliminating the shame of seeking help by focusing on the benefits and joy of mutual community support.

RBGV Annual Report: Publication

An annual report for the Royal Botanical Gardens Victoria. Ruby produced sketches echoing a traditional botanical illustration style to reflect the organisation's scientific conservation work while highlighting how plants enrich our lives aesthetically and practically. Ruby developed a conventional grid and broke it, aligning with the professional corporate identity and emulating the whimsical, overgrown beauty of the gardens.

Songs in A Minor: Album Redesign

A redesign of the album ‘Songs in A Minor’ by Alicia Keys. The rationale for this redesign was to accurately reflect Keys’ youthful romances in a different way than the industry that over-sexualised her at a young age. Ruby painted symbolic imagery of flora and fauna in watercolour to reflect motifs of love and loss threaded throughout the album. The pomegranate on the inner fold, resembling an open heart, represents Keys' honest songwriting. It also alludes to the goddess Persephone whose story has strong thematic connections to the album.

Connecting Community: Branding

Branding of an education and community-based program in Fitzroy. The new design reflects the program’s goals of connecting, learning from others and celebrating diversity through the simple symbol of shaking hands. Ruby has used bold colours that appeal to the broad audience of 6-18. She developed playful hand icons and graphics to represent the program's values. They have various uses such as digital assets or aspects of the educational material.

Fishbone Bites: Packaging

Packaging for a range of canned seafood products. Ruby created a bright, modern and playful twist on the often traditional packaging style of canned goods. The range highlights the unique flavours of each box while maintaining a consistent graphic style. She developed detailed line drawings featuring the main ingredients for each pack. The finished product reflects the brand's goal of taking inspiration from tradition to create bold new innovative flavours.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.