Nicole Lavelle

Designer
Artist
Writer
Hire me

About
Newsletter

nicolelavelle@gmail.com 

I’m a designer, artist, and writer working on social, cultural, and community-driven projects. Let’s work together!

DESIGN

Personal Voice Workbook


A workbook for introspection, exploration, and finding your voice. 

Dropbox.Design Culture Kits, open-source resources for the design community. 

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Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit


A multi-faceted tool for taking steps towards more diverse and inclusive culture at work and beyond.
Dropbox.Design Culture Kits, open-source resources for the design community. 

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Team Values Toolkit


A toolkit for teams to align and establish common values.

Dropbox.Design Culture Kits, open-source resources for the design community.

Read More


Rural Futures Deck


A card deck for collective imagining, brimming with poetic inspiration.

With Hi-Vis Agency
Read more


End of Life Times


A community newspaper exploring death and dying in an effort to live more fully. 

For Reimagine
Download here
🔒

Virtual First User Journeys


Day-in-the-life maps to help employees understand their new relationships to the office.


🔒

Future-of-Work Consulting


Creative consulting on ways to nurture community and build culture for newly decentralized teams. 


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Research at Dropbox


For four years, I was the dedicated designer for the Research Team at Dropbox. I helped user researchers transform their complex findings into clear, narrative artifacts for product teams. 

I also created a delightfully tangible library of engaging tools and materials for co-creative user research workshops.

Illustrations by Rob Moss Wilson


Tokyo Seeds


A Design Residency with Japan’s national train company. I pitched community engagement strategy to the company’s leaders. 

Yes, it was a little bit like MTV’s The Real World for graphic designers.

Read more


🔒

Corporate Culture Workshop


An engaging, social, and playful wokshop for every single employee of a large biotech company, to help drive meaningful adoption of new company tenets.


Twenty-First Century Design Skills


A mainstage presentation for the Awwwards Conference, for Dropbox Design Researcher Jennifer Brook.

Watch the talk



Jennifer Brook Identity


Visual identity and website for a multi-hyphenate design practitioner.

With Multi Studio

Visit the site


Open Engagement


Design direction for six iterations of an annual art conference, all with an eye for flexible, living identity systems and DIY modes of production.

Complete design archive in progress.



Lookbook


A collection of playful projects for artists, musicians, creative businesses, and cultural organizations. Branding, merch, illustration, and graphics.
ART

Place Talks


A lecture series about location, presented with the Prelinger Library in San Francisco.
Read more



Paper Road


A research project weaving my family history with larger California cultural narratives.
Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellowship project. Book published by Publication Studio San Francisco



Green River Publications


Community publications made with residents of a small, rural, desert town in Utah. 

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An Incomplete History


A public history project about community publishing, presented at the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History in Inverness, California.
More soon



Common Source


A public library installation and participatory event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, exploring the public commons.
Read more



Plant Family


A multi-media narrative project weaving tendrils of personal loss, family history, and a changing San Francisco. 
Watch video


Wild Cards


A tool for creativity, a game with no rules. For getting un-stuck and finding unexpected connections.
More soon
WRITING


PILES


A Substack mostly about art, design, community, and place.
Subscribe



The Relationship Between Things in a Continuum


An essay about growing up in San Francisco. Politics, power, nostalgia, myth, hyperobjects, and their interlocking tendrils.
Published by Flower Press

Read more



Codes and Questions for Anyone Who Goes Anywhere


An essay about small towns, tourism, West Marin, and how to be a good visitor. 
Published by Office of Virtue

Read it here



CYCLES


An essay about grief and the ocean.
Performed at the Headlands Center for the Arts and CENTER. Collaboration with Daniel Melo on guitar

Read it here

ABOUT

I approach design holistically, engaging creative strategy, research, co-creation, and visual design. I believe design is a social practice. 

In my art practice, I create conditions for meaningful participation and collective experience. 

In my writing, I am thinking about place, identity, community, and inclusion.



In residence at Blue Sky Center, New Cuyama California.
HIRE ME

Let’s work together!


Freelance
I’m interested in new, ongoing relationships with agencies, studios, and in-house design teams. I also offer holistic design support to small businesses and cultural organizations.

Contract
I’m available for project-based contract positions.

Full-time
I’m open to a full-time position with a purpose-driven organization; if it’s the right fit, it’s the right fit!

LinkedIn
CV
PDF resume
Email me

If you’re looking for a thoughtful, experienced, hard-working designer (and a fun, chill co-worker), I’d love to hear from you.



I’ve worked with companies like IDEO, Dropbox, Figma, and Patagonia, as well as user researchers, cultural orgs, non-profits, and creative businesses.
I’m a proud design generalist with experience in print, digital, social, marketing, human-centered design, brand, product/UX, research, and consulting.  I contribute as a thought-partner to interdisciplinary teams. Often I’m brought in as a graphic designer, but I always bring more to the table.I’m excited about working with purpose-driven and people-centric organizations. I’m drawn to work for the public good. I’m AI-curious, especially when it comes to safety. 



SELECT CLIENTS

IDEO
Figma
Dropbox
findhelp.org
Compass
The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School
The Institute of Ecotechnics
Greenpeace
Patagonia
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Bolinas Art Museum
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Headlands Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
For Freedoms
Reimagine End of Life
Point Reyes Books
Greenhorns
Fibershed
SELECT PROFESSIONAL AND CREATIVE EXPERIENCE

Design Instructor
School of Art + Design, Portland State University

Design Director
Open Engagement Conference

Art Director
Portland Mercury

Graduate Fellow and Affiliate Artist
Headlands Center for the Arts

Resident Artist
Prelinger Library

Designer in Residence
East Japan Railway

See the details on LinkedIn