Rachele Riley (born and raised in Washington, DC, USA) is an artist, graphic designer, and design educator passionate about typography, imaging, data, and language. She is focussed on shaping poetic, empathetic, and research-based approaches to visual communication. Her multi-faceted work explores the relationships between place, change, environment, and conflict; and engages the material and organizational systems of archives. She is interested in exploring experiences of phenomena through letter form design, collage, visual mappings, and interactive/generative imaging.

Rachele has presented, published, and exhibited her work in national and international settings—at Artist Replete Gallery in Chicago, IL (2024); at 1708 Gallery’s InLight21 in Richmond, VA (2021); at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York (2019); the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, NC (2018); the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England (2013); and at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Canada (2014), among other venues. Her project, The Evolution of Silence (launched 2013), which explores the impact of forty-one years of post-WWII nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, was named an Official Honoree in NetArt by The Webby Awards (2014) and recognized by AIGA Philadelphia Design Awards (2017), and was recently included in the exhibition and book, Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural (Actar Publisher, 2022). Her client-based design work has been recognized by Communication Arts Magazine (Typography Annual) (2018), Print Magazine’s Design Regional (2008), and featured in the book, Motion Design (Woolman, 2004). She works collaboratively with Daniel McCafferty and Joshua Singer as part of Different Data, on a project that explores design ecologies in cities. She served on the Board of Directors for DesignInquiry from 2013–2015, co-framing the DI:DesignCity project in Detroit, MI in 2014. 

Rachele has a MFA in Design/Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University, a Vordiplom in Communication Design from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, Germany, and a BS in Studio Art from New York University. She has taught art and design at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of North Carolina Charlotte, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Associate Professor of New Media and Design at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and lives in Durham, NC. In 2025, Rachele Riley was selected by the US-UK Fulbright Commission as an alternate for the Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award.