Design 21: Social Design Network

Rinelle is a passionately curious creative. Fueled by all the possibilities that exist within and outside of design, she looks for inspiration in every person and life experience that comes her way.

As a multidisciplinary designer, she is adept at wearing different hats for the challenge at hand. Her anthropologist cap allows her to keep an open mind and be intensely observant enabling her to hunt for problems and identify opportunities. She dons the explorer hat and heads out to investigate other territories beyond her comfort zone in order to draw connections between seemingly unrelated ideas of concepts in the pursuit of innovation and discovery. The brainstorming beanie empowers her to generate and contribute ideas for developing concepts whilst her storytellers’ newsboy pushes her to create compelling narratives of all the hard work, the opportunities, the insights, and their solutions

One would think that she’s a little bit of a Jack-of-all-Trades with all these hats but contrary to that, her varied headgear and skills support her expertise in the fields of Built Environments (Interior Architecture & Design) and Design Innovation Strategy.

She received her interior design foundation at the Philippine School of Interior Design (PSID) and followed this up with a BFA in Interior Design from The Art Institute (AI) in Houston, Texas in 2004. Upon finishing, she joined the award winning Texas design firm of brooks•reid studio, where she got her feet wet and grew as a design professional. In 2010, after a year of travelling the world - she decided to return to graduate school and pursue an MA in Multidisciplinary Design Innovation at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. She graduated with Distinction in the winter of 2011 following an intensive year of collaborative design thinking and problem solving with live industry clients.

These experiences along with her unconventional upbringing has attributed greatly to who she is today. The daughter of distinguished scientists and sister to a notable chef – she was born in Mexico and was raised in between there, the Philippines, and the USA. She now resides in the UK and has adopted this country as her 4th home.