May 29, 2025

Real-world experiences shaped Ferris State grad Elena Roberts’ plans for career in graphic design

Elena Roberts was drawn to creativity from a young age, but the roots of her planned career in graphic design started with high school elective course on writing and illustrating children’s books.

Creating her story—about an ostrich that escapes the zoo to go grocery shopping—and sharing it with local elementary school students opened her eyes to the power and possibility of visual communication.

Roberts graduated this month from Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design. The Graphic Design major was selected to be the valedictorian of the class of 2025 -- KCAD’s highest academic honor -- based on her academic achievement, leadership qualities, service to the college, and the recommendation of her program faculty.

“It's an incredible honor to be named valedictorian, and a privilege to see all the hard work I put in come back to me as love and appreciation from my KCAD community,” Roberts said. “I feel so grateful for all the support I’ve received from everyone I’ve interacted with during my time here.”

Professors and program co-chairs Jason Alger and Joan Sechrist indicated Roberts exemplifies the qualities the Graphic Design program has identified to create success: intention, collaboration, participation, curiosity, resourcefulness, commitment, and tenacity.

Roberts’ qualities were not only evident in class, but her engagement in other aspects of the college, including her active roles in student organizations and General Education classes.

Roberts, a 2020 graduate of Grand Rapids Christian High School, said her writing and illustration project there helped shape her future plans.

“I always liked to draw but hadn’t really pursued any art classes to that point,” she said. “This was the first time I got to pair imagery with text and experiment with different layouts. It was exciting to see how my creative decisions shaped readers’ experiences.”

As it turned out, Roberts wasn’t just interested in graphic design and illustration—she was good at it. Her skills caught the attention of the children’s book publisher involved in the course, who offered her freelance work doing illustrations for a similar course aimed at senior citizens.

Creating with a client in mind proved to be a pivotal experience.

“It was an interesting transition to suddenly have more people interacting with the things I was making,” Roberts said. “It forced me to be more intentional and confident in my creative decisions.”

After beginning her college career at another institution, double majoring in German and Marketing, Roberts switched from Marketing to Graphic Design less than two months into her first semester.

 Following her second, she was looking for a different cultural fit and decided to transfer to KCAD’s Graphic Design program.

“Being in a place where everything and everyone around me was focused on creative pursuits was inspiring,” Roberts said. “I found so much value in those first foundational courses, and specifically in the critique portions because I wasn’t very good initially at explaining my work.”

The freedom her Graphic Design faculty offered her to build on foundational design principles with her own style and substance, coupled with the program’s collaborative, close-knit environment, formed the perfect launchpad for Robert’s creative and professional development.

“One of the great things about KCAD is that the professors all know us and our approaches to design so well that they can guide us on a personal level,” she said. “That feeling of being seen and known has been an invaluable part of my experience.”

As she honed her process and her technical abilities, Roberts also sought growth opportunities outside of the classroom. She plugged into the industry as secretary of the KCAD student chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. She expanded her freelance portfolio working with clients like sports and health technology company MoveXFactor and a pair of independent game designers.

She even took on a part-time job as an assistant printmaker at Papillion Press in Grand Rapids, where she learned how to run and maintain traditional letterpress printing tools, translate digital designs into high-quality physical prints, and restore the bindings of centuries-old antique books.

Roberts also took full advantage of every internship opportunity that came her way. Through KCAD’s Innovation Hub, which connects companies seeking customized design solutions to tailored teams of KCAD students, faculty and staff, she had the opportunity to collaborate with KCAD Product Design student Shin Su to help the Nestlé R&D team develop a packaging design for a new product. The pair created the product name, design system, and primary and secondary package designs.

"We would have weekly meetings where we would make a bunch of thumbnails and present our ideas to the Nestlé team for critique,” Roberts said. “It really pushed us outside of our comfort zone with so many different people giving feedback each week and all these different perspectives and opinions to consider. Learning how to merge all that into one final vision was a challenging and rewarding experience.”

This past fall, Roberts further honed her abilities as a consensus-building visual communicator through another internal KCAD internship position.

This time, she was tapped to lead branding and visual communication efforts for the West Michigan Design Prize, a newly launched design thinking competition for elementary and middle school students collaboratively organized by KCAD, the Greater West Michigan MiSTEM Region, Kent Intermediate School District, Muskegon Area Intermediate School District, and Ottawa Area Intermediate School District.

Much like the Nestlé internship, Roberts had to consider multiple audiences and stakeholders in her design process. The branding and marketing materials she was developing had to be engaging and understandable for both participating students and their teachers/mentors, while also reflecting the shared vision of the organizations behind the competition. There was also the additional challenge of it being a pilot program with zero existing awareness to build from.

“Learning to identify and understand the common goal and build from there was a big part of this internship,” Roberts said. “Everyone had different opinions on some of the more aesthetic design choices, but I found that making sure everything connected back to the goal of a positive event experience for students and educators helped us all stay on the same page and ultimately helped elevate the design. It’s balancing act of, ‘how do I present the information in a way that people are going to want to read it without taking away from the content itself?’”

It hasn’t just been success that’s shaped Roberts’ journey. Failure has played a pivotal role, too. She recalled one class project where she had to create an ad campaign for a nonprofit promoting menstrual education and found herself prioritizing her own preferences and perspective rather than those of the campaign’s intended audience. 

“We were weeks into the project at this point, and I had become completely wrapped up in an idea that I really liked,” she said. “During a one-on-one critique with my professor, I realized that I wasn’t thinking enough about the real-world context. The experience taught me to be intentional about stepping back early and often to make sure I’m taking a high-level view of the project.” 

That focus on process has come to define Roberts’ growth as a creative professional. 

“The idea of a process to design, where I’m channeling every idea and decision through questions of ‘what goal does this design need to achieve? Who is it speaking to and what do I need the audience to know and feel? What’s the best way to communicate with them?’ —I never considered any of that to be ‘design’ before coming to KCAD,” she said. “Now, it’s my favorite part of design, figuring out how I answer these questions in a way that people with respond to and feel connected to.” 

Roberts is now focused on deepening her industry experience, particularly in the print publishing sector. More broadly, she wants to create design that cuts through the cacophony of our modern media landscape and resonates with people in a more meaningful way.

“It's very easy to find yourself in an echo chamber these days. I just want people to stop for even a second longer than they normally would, and to think more introspectively,” she said. “I want my work to open doors and spark questions and conversations that stay with you longer after you’ve stopped looking at it.”

To the students following in her footsteps, Roberts makes clear there is no secret formula or roadmap to making the most of their time at KCAD. Her advice is simple: face fear head on and step boldly into the unknown, because you never know what opportunities await.

“Every formative experience I’ve had at KCAD has been one where I was unsure if I was the right fit, but I just decided to jump in anyway,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to take those leaps of faith, especially now, because college is the perfect time to try new things and make mistakes because you have so many people supporting you.”

An online exhibition of creative work from Roberts and the rest of the KCAD class of 2025 is on view now at kcad.edu/ase.