Info
Studio Elana Schlenker is a design practice lead by (yes, you guessed it) Elana Schlenker. Our aim is to do the work we love every day—make stuff we’re proud of—with people who want to do the same thing.
Our specialty is not having one. Our projects span branding and art direction, interactive design, packaging, print, environmental, and product design. Sometimes we do a bit of naming, copywriting, and strategy, too.
Our clients are similarly varied, spanning cultural institutions and universities (The Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Cornell, International Center for Photography, Walker Art Center); tech titans (Facebook, Google); publishers (A24, Aperture, The New York Times, Phaidon); design, fashion, and wellness brands (Dusen Dusen, Figma, THINX); artists and musicians; non-profits; and startups.
To paraphrase America’s most venerated boy band: We don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you do as long as you’re passionate about design and collaboration. (Disclosure: the Backstreet Boys are not our clients.)
Street cred
Our work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections like the Museum of Modern Art and the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum. We have been recognized by the Center for Architecture, Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards, and the Society for News Design. We have also been featured extensively in print and online media (if you’re into that kind of thing, just Google us).
Elana was selected as a Young Gun by The One Club for Creativity (formerly the Art Directors Club) in 2015 and named a Print Magazine New Visual Artist in 2013—both annual distinctions recognizing the world’s top creative talents under 30 (she is now over 30).
Extra credit
We publish the design magazine Gratuitous Type; are the creators of Less Than 100, a pop-up shop for gender wage parity; and have on occassion commissioned and installed art in public spaces through our project Placeholder. On select projects, we collaborate with Mark Pernice and Leslie Campisi as OutofOffice.
Elana speaks at creative conferences and events, among them Adobe MAX (LA), Google SPAN (Pittsburgh), Offset (Dublin), One Day Out (Copenhagen), and Typographics (New York). She has been a Strange Foundation Fellow (2018), Designer in Residence at the Meta Open Arts program (2018), and Center for Urban Pedagogy Making Policy Public Design Fellow. Since 2016, she has also lectured at the Image Text Ithaca low-residency MFA program at Cornell University.
Site design: Studio Elana Schlenker
Development: Eric Jacobsen
Portrait: Kate Isobel Scott
Illustrations: Pete Gamlen
Typography: Kessler & Neue Haas Grotesk