Andrea Miralles
Web Designer / Illustrator / Graphic Designer / Painter
Newark, NJ
www.andreamiralles.com
instagram @andreamiralles.studio
youtube @andreamiralles.studio
threads @andreamiralles.studio
linkedin @andreamiralles686
twitter @dremiralles
Q What do you do?
“I believe the world is a better place when we express ourselves authentically. With my knack for art, design, and engineering, I’m passionate about elevating brands with immersive visual experiences, transforming them into high-end brands. I help stories, businesses, and organizations stand out with visuals that communicate the brand’s unique voice and mission.”
I am a multidisciplinary graphic and fine artist from the Bay Area, CA inspired by my Filipino island roots, cultural connections, and Mother Nature. In my fine art practice, my surreal figurative works address mental health, our interconnectedness with nature, and inner power.
I combine this with my freelance graphic work as a brand designer, illustrator, graphic designer, and web designer. I love partnering with businesses working on building the brand of their dreams. I help them activate a wider, more diverse audience through meaningful storytelling and a bold, organic, and evocative visual experience. I also love to work on editorial and commercial illustration and graphic design.
Q What steps did you take to get to where you are now?
I took the long way up the switchbacks on the scenic route to get here. I started out post-college as a content analyst and knowledge engineer at Yahoo, followed by five years as a software engineer at the finance tech start up Carta. My passion projects on the side were: community organizing, blogging, and making art for organizations I worked with and my co-founded zine/art collective.
In 2022, I started my art business while still working in tech. Realizing that I absolutely love and enjoy creative work and can’t afford to focus on anything else, I became self-employed full-time at the end of 2023. I balance freelance graphic art with a traditional art practice, organizing gallery shows with my co-founded all-women Filipina art collective called Tsismosas.
Q How do you stand out in your field?
I have always been a creative, intuitive, outdoorsy and fun-loving person—that informs much of my art, personality, and compassionate world-view. From the rigor and collaborative environment of tech, I learned to: find creative solutions, ask questions, over-communicate specs and deliverables, maintain accountability with my work, listen and lead, and work effectively with diverse teammates and clients. Now, as a solopreneur managing everything on my own, I meld the intuitive with the analytical, working in my zone of creative flow as effectively as possible with a central focus on client and customer relationships.
My unique perspective as a multidisciplinary artist and daughter to Filipino immigrants inspired by culture, nature, and my travels gives me a breadth of experience and symbolic language that I use to power my stylistic choices.
Q What are you working on right now?
My consistent client Rising Filipinas just started planning ahead and using a content calendar. I encouraged them to create a schedule and content calendar to streamline my process and that of our whole team. This helps me have a healthy lead time to develop creative assets for them and know what’s coming next.
I want to transform and elevate the visual identity of the brand and allow us to create brand merchandise and reach a larger audience, so I am planning a rebrand for the organization. I also plan to run a 3-part workshop series with them called “Unmasking your Creativity” and am starting planning on that.
In the meantime, I’m taking an online business course and branding course, refining my business model, maintaining my weekly newsletter, creating surface designs for new merchandise for my art pop ups—Swedish dishcloths that I’m really excited about because they’re eco-friendly and so functional. I’m also working on personal branding projects and going to start brand design for my podcast in the works!
Q What’s your style?
My style is very eclectic: organic retro, psychedelic maximalist, and organic modern all resonate with me. I paint and illustrate with bold, vibrant, and natural colors; I incorporate organic textures, natural forms, flowing lines and abstract shapes; I draw inspiration from the 50s to the 80s and love to play with different levels of white space, layering elements, and symbols.
My fine art tends toward figurative, textured, surreal, and natural elements with vibrant colors. It varies client to client for graphic work, but in web design, I go for a natural and sleek streamlined aesthetic with earth tones and a splash of color to brighten things up and communicate fun/friendliness/good vibes. With illustration/design, I focus on the client’s target audience but lean towards textured, evocative, bold elements and colors with figures who communicate a sense of ease and liberation. A project that represents this is my graphic work with Third Coast Audio Festival: https://www.andreamiralles.com/third-coast. I love working in series with a cohesive color palette and single theme in my graphic and fine art work, as demonstrated by the LUVV Collection of small paintings here: https://www.andreamiralles.com/work/painting.
Q Out of all your slashies, which one do you wish you could do more often?
I wish I could focus more on painting. My fine art informs my graphic art and vice versa, but I enjoy the tactility and rawness of working with paint and physical materials. I am a visual learner, but I am first and foremost a hands-on person. I can’t wait to have a solo exhibit and work on large-scale, wall-sized canvases and murals. Seeing a finished artwork hung up is an experience unlike any other. It is so much more real than digital art, and that’s why I also love designing products and printed materials because I actually get to experience my work in 3D.
Q What is frustrating you right now?
I should be automating sending cold emails and lowering the barrier to reach out to potential clients. I do a lot better in person, networking at events and markets, rather than via social media and email. I’d like to have a healthy balance between digital outreach and in-person lead generation. Whatever the best mix is for me, I’m looking for more aligned clients to collaborate with.
Q If you could hire someone for $20/hour, what would you have them do to make your day easier?
I cannot wait to hire someone part-time! I’d have them: itemize my transactions for my budgeting app YNAB, wrap and package art prints and orders, schedule IG posts, interact with the community on my IG for engagement, save trending audio for future reels, log art/business reel trends so I can templatize them, and do printing for me in my studio.
Q What do you wish you could have told yourself, when, and why?
I would tell little Andrea not to be afraid of her own voice and share her opinions more because they matter and people care to hear them. As a woman who has broken plenty of stereotypes—in sports, academia, engineering, art, activism, business—I used my rebelliousness and ambition to my advantage yet felt a lack of voice, belonging, and validation for who I was inside. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have this to fight for, but I would rather forgo the too-familiar feeling of wanting to say something but overthinking it and silencing myself because of internal and environmental pressures.
Q If you could talk to an expert to gain more insight on something, what would it be about?
The best strategies for creating a flywheel effect in my business—I want my business to be as efficient and attractive to prospective clients as possible. I’d love to meet an expert who does precisely what I do who has two lines of business freelancing and selling art. I am blending the two well and I absolutely love both verticals, but there’s room to fine tune each one, expand, and elevate my business.
Q What kind of opportunities/projects are you looking for?
I am looking for brand identity projects, illustration/graphic design projects, and web design. In terms of illustration/design, I’m looking for editorial/commercial/book illustration and surface/package/poster design. I’d love to work with new businesses needing branding or established businesses seeking a brand refresh. I also welcome opportunities with creators, artists, non-profits, organizations, publishers, and editorial.
I love to create and flex my creative versatility, so I welcome a variety of projects.
Q Describe your ideal job/client/collaboration.
I would absolutely love to work with a women-owned gear shop based on the sunny California coast. The kind of store that sells surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, skis, and all the activewear needed to cover you up when you’re shredding or hanging ten. People are tremendously active and into sports on the California coast, and you can feel the good vibes in the air. I dream of working on branding projects with this type of company—with women who share my love of the outdoors, active lifestyles, and quality gear to support the two.
They would feel aligned with my services and want me to help them create a standout brand, from logos and color system to typography, collateral, and web design. My zone of genius is working on a creative project end-to-end, and no other client work gets me in my creative flow like branding.
Because this ideal company highly resonates with me and who I am, we would be in sync. They would love my vision for the brand, have little to no critiques, and feel proud to rep their new visual identity. This would in turn, attract more aligned customers to them and their offerings.
Because I love making genuine connections, I’d hope to keep in touch with the business owner; I’d be available to them if they needed future work and they’d feel comfortable relying on me for edits and new projects. They’d become a client who can champion me and my services to their network and provide a raving testimonial to help me land new clients.
Q: What is your rate?
Illustration/Graphic Design project: $500+
Basic Brand Design/Logo suite: $2,000-5,000
Brand Design, Strategy, Collateral: $6,000-$10,000
Strategy, Design, Collateral, Website: $8,000-$20,000
Custom Website: $3,000+
I am open to hourly rates for consistent clients. A comprehensive view of my rates can be found here. Contact me if you need a flex plan. I'm also open to working with solopreneurs and non-profits at a discounted rate. Get in touch for a custom quote that doesn’t fit any of these offers!
Q How should someone approach you about working together?
Here is my work inquiry form on my website, and one can also email me directly at andreamaymiralles@gmail.com with relevant project info on: vision, scope, deliverables, timeline, resources, and budget so we can accurately estimate the project.
Q Who is a creative you admire?
Cassandra Balbas is a multi-talented designer and artist based in NYC and part of my Tsismosas art collective. She is reducing her hours at her full time design role to focus more on freelance and dictating her creative projects. She has a community and social good-focused mission.
@cassandrabalbas / Work Bio / LinkedIn
Casielle Gaerlan is a painter/illustrator/multidisciplinary artist also in my Pinay art collective. She was who I went to when I wanted to organize a Pinay art show in 2022 because I loved her talent, strong Brooklyn-based network, and amazing energy. She does it all from painting to illustration and design and has been freelancing since graduating college, so I’ve been learning a lot from having her on my team.
@casielle.jpg / Portfolio
Q Oh! and… how do you stay creative?
Balance, hanging with loved ones, nature, nerding out on: the animal kingdom, astrology, sci-fi, and fantasy.
This member profile was originally published in July 2024.