Rebecca Ruhlman

So, you’re a 5’11’’ Redhead. Are you secretly a basketball-playing super model?

Geez, I wish. Just good old Midwestern genes, I guess. Though, I do love college basketball. Come March, you can find me at “B-Dubs” with the boys – eating wings and watching the game.

You’re originally from the Midwest?

Straight from the good ol’ state of Ohio! I know we get a reputation around “other areas of the country,” but it was a great place to grow up and develop one’s identity and values. From the Wright Brothers to Katie Holmes, Ohioans have always been progressive innovators. I’d like to think some of it has rubbed off.

How’d you get into media design?

Actually, I went to college at Kent State University for architecture, but I found myself spending more and more time in the office of the student newspaper. I was asked to help illustrate and design a few packages, and I was hooked. I soon found myself art directing magazines, planning concerts and working as the lead designer for the county transportation service.

Rock ‘n’ Roll question: Who’re your influences?

Definitely, the Wabbit. Bugs Bunny had an incalculable impact on my childhood. I actuallly learned to draw from copying old Bugs Bunny comics, and watching Warner Bros. cartoons on Saturday mornings. Animation was my biggest source of inspiration. I would, and still do, doodle madly during down time as a way of organizing ideas. In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold was a scene from the Fantasia sequence “Night on Bald Mountain.”

How do you approach a project?

As with reporting and writing, the trick is to find the story behind any company or event. Each client has her own particular tale and way of doing business. A development team, for instance, might be about integration, but delving a little deeper we find that the CEO is an amateur astronomer/physicist. Pretty soon, we’re on to “M” theory and multi-plane integration. And voila, we have our concept.

Okay, top five experiences… GO!

1. Delivered pizza to the Allman Brothers Band.
2. Worked on a World Trade Center submission while on a private beach outside Cape Canaveral.
3. Relaunched a literary magazine and doubled its revenue during its first print cycle.
4. I was invited to talk about illustration and publishing on public radio.
5. Received stir-frying lessons from Martin Yan of “Yan Can Cook!”