graphic design, creative thinking, problem solving

Jessie Rauch is a multitalented graphic designer, and creative thinker. She’s passionate about the design process and in finding solutions to problems — whatever form they may take.

She is well experienced in the development of imaging, typographic and branding systems, and in translating visual concepts across a variety of media: print, motion, performance, interactive, web.

Jessie’s nine years of professional experience includes positions at multinational design agencies: Razorfish, and USWeb/CKS; and work for clients such as Clinique and M·A·C Cosmetics.

Her personal work combines depth and wit to create ironic commentary on politics and pop culture. She has an active interest in design history, and wrote her master's thesis on graphic design satire.

Jessie holds an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island
School of Design, and a BA in computer science from Smith College.

She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: installed at the RISD MFA Graduate Show, May 2008 A Pantheon of Media Gods: hands on the prints A Pantheon of Media Gods: Aretmis Couric

Of Katie Couric,
Anchor of bounteous heart and benignant gut, I sing.
Her bare legs tanned, oiled and painstakingly arranged.
Dread guardian goddess of her own ambition,
her Soccer-mom persona abandoned for that of a sexy sophisticate.
She bounds beyond the shadowy hills and windy peaks of substantiated journalism,
to blur hard news and entertainment.
Foe of the media critic,
her domain is in the chase of a higher market share.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Apollo A.C.

Muse, sing of Anderson Cooper
A Vanderbilt, affectionately called A.C.
The Oracles smile upon the anchorperson of the future.
Noble and lovely,
far-darting,
former model,
whose light-producing eyes and silver locks
have earned him a place on list of best-dressed and the sexiest men alive.
He surveys the world’s wide bounds, all-flourishing, and reveals all
— (except for his sexual orientation.)
Impassioned coverage, emo-journalism, deep-fixed and profound.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Hermes Colbert

Muse, sing of Colbert, superstantial lord of truthiness,
rich in ego.
The eneagled messenger of the fact-averse.
A man of many shifts,
blandly cunning,
Lincolnish,
a flagaphile, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night,
a tipper of the hat, a wagger of the finger,
one who has shown forth wonderful deeds among the Emmy-nominated.
Crafty Colbert, robber of O’Reilly’s microwave.
He fears naught but bears.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Amanpour Athena

Of Amanpour, correspondent of terrific mind, I begin to sing.
Hope of soldiers, illustrious kind, ineffable and effable.
The arts of war and chaos are her inspiration and domain:
Bosnia, Somalia, the Persian Gulf, Baghdad, Darfur, Kurdish refugees,
terrorists in London, riots in France, the war crimes of Milosevic,
the tsunami in Sri Lanka, the hurricane in New Orleans.
She is with us in times of trial, conflict, disaster and battle.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Rush Dionysus

Rush, I call, loud-sounding, mad, inspirer of chaos.
Furious instigator of anti-Democratic operations,
amid billowing clouds of cigar smoke,
and oxycodone, ill-begotten.
God of conservative might, whom sacred rage delight
and Dittoheads adore.
Your favor withheld from liberals, feminists and Al Franken.
A twofold shape is thine:
power to bestow on the Republican nominee
and a mystic vision of The Way Things Ought to Be.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: O'Reilly Ares

Hail to O’Reilly, father of the no-spin zone!
Whose mighty power dares to challenge Truth itself.
Exceeding in strength of voice, red-faced, unwearying,
Self-described independent, traditionalist, populist.
He tosses “you-shut-ups” like spears.
He rejoices in controversy and delights in the dire ruin of mad savage fight.
A Culture Warrior.
Avenger of Christmas.
Harasser of female television producers.
His works, with woe, embitter human life.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Oprah Hestia

Muse, sing of Oprah, in the high dwellings of all,
that she may bestow upon us her grace,
her aid for living our best lives,
her diet plans.
She has gained everlasting abode and highest honor
glorious is her portion and her right.
Post-modern goddess of the cult of confession,
a sad story is apt to rouse a tear in her eye.
Soul-bearing, home-decorating,
determiner of the New York Times best-seller list,
giver of Pontiac sedans.

A Pantheon of Media Gods: Aphrodite Coulter

Of Coulter, rich-crowned polemicist, defender of conservatism, I will sing.
She gives bombastic gifts to men:
shrillness is ever on her controversial tongue
and controversial is the shrillness that plays over it.
Cursed are those who incur her wrath
and the ire of her poisoned pen:
those whose hearts she cannot bend or ensnare —
that sacrifice on the alter of political correctness —
the liberals, the godless, the 9/11 widows.

  • A Pantheon of Media Gods
  • 2008
  • series of 13x19in. ink-jet prints

This series transforms media celebrities into Greek Gods as metaphorical commentary on the power that individual pundits and journalists have in controlling access to information and in the shaping of public opinion.