Rolando is a mission-driven creative designer and lens-based artist with over a decade of experience in brand design, art direction, and film photography. He works between Los Angeles, Austin, and New York City.

 VITAL CITY NYC
SAFE HORIZON
IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CORPS
(W)RAPPER TOWER
DESIGN FOR PROGRESS
JLL
OUTSIDER BODIES
MONSTROSITY
LAW OFFICE OF DANIELA NANAU P.C.
OUTSIDER FEST
DANIEL TREJO
ST. EDWARD’S HOMECOMING

VITAL CITY NYC

Photography art direction, print book layout, and brand identity for a policy journal dedicated to improving New York’s civic life and promoting an optimistic future for big cities.



Vital City is an online and print publication dedicated to improving civic life by finding great ideas and innovative research and making them available — and understandable — to those who shape urban policy in New York City.




Under Design for Progress, I led Art Direction for the photography used throughout 3 issues of the journal that covered different topics including drug use, the relevancy of social science research, and the “Doom Loop” theory - in addition to laying out and designing the entire print book itself.





ISSUE 6 “ON DRUGS” PHOTO ART DIRECTION




ISSUE 7 “DOES EVIDENCE MATTER?” PHOTO ART DIRECTION



ISSUE 8 “IS THE URBAN DOOM LOOP FOR REAL?” PHOTO ART DIRECTION




With a growing audience and influence, I also had the opportunity to redesign and expand upon Vital City’s brand guidelines to set them up for an incoming in-house Art Director that would be the organization’s first.








Art Direction + Design :: Rolando Sepulveda II
Agency :: Design for Progress
Creative Direction :: Paragini Amin
Project Management + Operations + Art Dir. Support :: Ansley Pentz
Original Vital City word mark and visual identity developed by Paragini Amin and Megan Magray

SAFE HORIZON

A refreshed visual identity and brand guideline for the largest victim services nonprofit organization in the United States.



Safe Horizon is the largest victim service organization in the country, providing direct services to clients experiencing physical violence, sexual violence, community violence, emotional abuse, and exploitation. Since 1978 they have been a champion of safety throughout the five boroughs of New York City as advocates for systemic change, striving for a society where people are safe in their communities, homes, bodies, and minds.

Before:
After:



Under Design for Progress in 2024, I redesigned Safe Horizon’s Brand Guideline and had the opportunity to reimagine the organization’s visual identity with an updated color palette, type family, and supporting graphic elements.   









Bright primary colors reminiscent of New York City streets bring a straightforward realness that is championed by the organization’s evolved brand Vermillion, representing the fierce compassion and warmth Safe Horizon provides clients as a partner in their journey. The Roc Grotesk type family gives the visual identity a bold dynamism that supports their inclusive no one-size-fits-all approach, while expertly giving a shared voice to survivors.





With a new logo designed by NYC based Practical People and complete website overhaul by Portland based ThinkShout, Safe Horizon’s updated brand story and guideline has positioned the organization not just as the country’s largest direct service provider, but a real leader and advocate for safety as a universal human right.


Website by ThinkShout



Senior Designer :: Rolando Sepulveda II
Agency :: Design for Progress
Creative Director :: Paragini Amin
Director of Strategy :: Chris Edley III 
Project Manager + Operations :: Ansley Pentz
Brand Photography by Emily Leshner
Website by ThinkShout
Logo by Practical People

IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CORPS

An advocacy-forward annual report for the first and only fellowship dedicated to training and empowering promising lawyers and advocates in the immigration field.



Launched in 2014, IJC’s mission is to recruit, train, and populate the immigration field with the highest quality legal advocates to create a new generation of leaders with a lifelong commitment to immigrant justice.

Using the organization’s established brand guidelines, I designed their 2024-2025 annual report to be a bold call to action during a year of growing uncertainty and political volatility. 








Inspired by activist zine and poster styles, the art direction of the report reinforces IJC’s brand as a courageous community of individuals standing up for immigrants’ rights.  






Art Direction + Design :: Rolando Sepulveda II
Project Management + Operations :: Ansley Pentz

(W)RAPPER TOWER

An updated logo and marketing brand package for Los Angeles’ most daring and experimental creative office tower.

 Completed in 2023, (W)rapper is an experimental office tower designed by Eric Owen Moss Architects residing along the Hayden Tract in Culver City. 

Under JLL I had the opportunity to create an updated brand package to market the forward thinking tower, including an original new logo. 



Before

After



A creative office tower that was designed to convey the "conceptual tension between the possibilities of disorder and the promise of order”, (W)rapper provides tenants with spaces that redefine in-office working as all the floor plates are completely open and column-free. 

My proposed rebrand of Los Angeles’ first exoskeleton tower incorporates bold typography, airy gradients, and plays with negative space to better visualize the push and pull of the building’s daring unorthodox exterior with its airy unobstructed interior.


Creative Direction + Design :: Rolando Sepulveda II
Property images by Tom Bonner

OUTSIDER BODIES

Social teasers for an upcoming Queer Art Festival dedicated to our celestial BODIES. 



In a state—and a world—where queer and trans bodies are increasingly under threat, OUTsider offers this festival as both shield and sword, as altar and rave.



In this late capitalist and late colonialist era–when all forms of life are being eliminated through genocide and climate catastrophe–what does it mean to hold still for the camera and for our queer bodies and trans bodies to be photographed? What does it mean for these same bodies to want to move, to gesture, to vocalize, and to express a thought, a feeling, a desire? How can we grapple with the fact that our bodies signal a threat for some and are a symbol of liberation for others–most importantly, to ourselves?


Organization :: OUTsider (Austin, Texas)
Creative Direction + Design :: Rolando Sepulveda II

JONES LANG LASALLE (JLL)

A collection of corporate design projects from my time as an in-house creative for the Fortune 500 CRE company.




From 2018-2023 I worked as a Graphic Designer within JLL’s in-house creative agency, contributing to projects for a number of different departments including property marketing, research, sales enablement, and internal events/communications. 



From quarterly research reports to RFP’s to presentation decks to property marketing packages to a plethora of time-sensitive adhoc creative work - the design process at JLL was equal parts in-house and creative agency with most projects filtering through varying teams of marketers, project managers, brokers, and commercial property owners all across the United States.  



During the last few months in my role at JLL, I had the opportunity to create the word mark for the company’s largest annual event themed “Winning Together”.




MONSTROSITY AND THE OBSCENE/OFF-SCENE!

Creative design direction and production for a queer art festival dedicated to all that is deemed filthy and offensive in mainstream heteronormative culture.


Queer and trans artists have embraced the concept of “Monstrosity” as way to denounce the dominant systems of oppression and refuse being disciplined into normalcy. This refusal of the “normal” entails a decoding and a re-imagining of popular culture’s proclivity to equate the monstrous and the freakish with sexual deviancy and hysteria through vampires, werewolves, witches, and other such figurations.



For OUTsider’s 2025 Festival “Monstrosity and the Obscene Off/Scene!”, I conceptualized a mini-brand identity that utilizes brash color, monstrous photo illustrations, and obscenely skewed type to express the festival theme which seeks to lift up creative responses to what is deemed filthy, offensive, and less than human in mainstream culture.



Organization :: OUTsider (Austin, Texas)
Creative Direction + Design + Photography :: Rolando Sepulveda II

DESIGN FOR PROGRESS

A micro visual identity and website for a New York based creative agency dedicated to mission-driven work and progress.




Design for Progress is a woman-owned, brown-and-Black-led, strategy and creative firm dedicated to nonprofit, philanthropic, and mission-driven efficacy. Newly employed as the agency’s Senior Designer beginning September 2023, my very first project was to conceptualize, design, and develop a visual identity and new website for the studio within a month’s time.






With a rather short timeline to repackage years worth of nonprofit work into a new identity and website, complete with reimagined case studies, the final result displayed a creative agency that is fluid, moving, and kind of weird - in a way that works. 



Senior Designer (Brand + Website) :: Rolando Sepulveda II 
Agency :: Design for Progress (New York)

LAW OFFICE OF DANIELA NANAU, P.C.

A new website for an NYC-based civil rights attorney.




Daniela Nanau is a New York-based employment and civil rights attorney representing individuals and groups of employees who face discrimination, harassment, wage theft, wrongful termination and other injustice on the job. Daniela also represents students who are victims of sexual harassment, sexual assault, gender discrimination and retaliation at the college and graduate school level.




Under Design for Progress, I created a new website for Daniela that reflected her fierce passion and bold advocacy.

Agency :: Design for Progress (New York)
Client :: Law Office of Daniela Nanau, P.C. (New York City)
Creative Direction + Design :: Rolando Sepulveda II
Project Management + Communications :: Ansley Pentz

OUTSIDER FEST ATX

EVENT DESIGN + BRAND DESIGN + ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN


OUTsider is an Austin-based transmedia nonprofit that celebrates the bold originality and creative nonconformity of the LGBTQ+ communities through the presentation of provocative, overlooked and out-of-the-box film, dance, theater, performance art, music, writing and visual art.

Through its annual festival and conference, OUTsider unites queer artists, audiences and scholars from around the globe to exchange ideas, ignite conversations, transcend boundaries and experience new pleasures through artistic discovery.



Every year OUTsider’s Festival and Conference center around a theme that’s conceptualized by its Artistic Directors. As a Staff Photographer and Design Director of the Organization, I’ve maintained a photographic archive of the festival’s showcases since 2018 and have developed the general brand identity of the organization along with the creation of temporary brand identities for each festival theme since 2023. 

ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS FOR SOCIAL






For all communications and marketing needs, I conceptualize and design numerous assets that include social media posts, web design/updates, print banners, print programs, emails, festival badges, and merch. 





Organization :: OUTsider (Austin, Texas)
Creative Direction + Design + Photography :: Rolando Sepulveda II