Jenny is a graphic designer and design educator with over 20 years of experience. After completing her MFA in graphic design, she worked professionally in the publishing industry and at design firms in Cincinnati and Chicago where her clients included Target, American Girl, Bath & Body Works, and Simon and Schuster. Her work has been featured in Print and Step-By-Step Graphics magazines and included in shows by the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts), the Chicago Book Clinic, and the Art Directors Club of Cincinnati.
Jenny is a design entrepreneur and business owner. In 1996, she established her design studio, Jenny El-Shamy Design, LLC, a registered State of Indiana woman-owned business, where she works with a broad range of clients including the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Cook Medical, Inc., McGraw-Hill Publishing, the Indiana State Resource Center for Autism, the Monroe County Chapter of NOW (National Organization for Women), and the Grunwald Gallery of Art.
From 2002-2021, she taught in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture Design where she served as coordinator of the graphic design program and faculty mentor to hundreds of MFA and BFA students' thesis projects. Her courses included professional practice, design for social impact, branding, typography, design activism, and design for non-profits. Her research interests are socially conscious design, human-centered design, experience design, museum learning, and service learning. While at the Eskenazi School, she co-founded and co-directed the ServeDesign Center, which works in partnership with campus and community to promote engaged scholarship, civic and social responsibility, and design for social impact. She's been awarded multiple grants and fellowships to support her creative work, teaching, and pedagogical leadership.
She was one of 50 women designers—including industry pioneers and design icons Paula Scher and April Grieman—invited to participate in a global poster initiative celebrating the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), in partnership with the League of Women Voters. The goal was to motivate the American public to register and turn out to vote in the 2020 election. The poster collection has been shown at museums and galleries across the country, including Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Contemporary Art, The Houston Printing Museum, RISD Museum, San Diego Design Week, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the University of Michigan Stamps Gallery, among others.
Jenny is currently working on a variety of design projects and recently completed the UX, signage and way-finding design for the new Southwest Branch of the Monroe County Public Library—which opened in summer 2023—with Matheu Architects, PC; and Faces of Homelessness, a new book of portraits by artist and photographer Jeffrey A. Wolin, (represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago), Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg Berlin, publisher.