An insight into the designer behind the menu boards on campus

Lu’s Deli menu board by Lynzie Horejs

Ever since she was a kid, graphic designer Lynzie Horejs has always felt like an artist.

Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Horejs’ roots in design stem from a computer coding class she took in high school, thinking it was the only way to get into the artform.

Anyway, Horejs claims she would’ve always gone into fine art. Graphic design, however, has become a more practical avenue for her to be creative and bring art into the world.

“I don’t do free creative stuff, I like designing things that are more functional,” Horejs said.

Freshman year of college at Loyola University Chicago, Horejs’ skills in computer coding and a good grasp on letter forms from her visual communications made her stand out from the rest when she applied for a graphic design role in Aramark Foods, the company that manages the dining halls for the university.

“I found the application through their Instagram story,” Horejs said. “I got pretty lucky since I was a freshman. I’m not sure why they chose me.”

This position has given her the opportunity to design the menu boards students see around campus and jumpstart her career as a graphic designer.

Horejs describes her work as “a good combination of words and graphics.” After finding the appropriate inspiration for her pieces, she pulls images from stock websites like Shutterstock and crafts a design with complementing fonts and colors.

Working for Aramark Foods is “really fast,” said Horejs.

There really isn’t much planning ahead on her projects as she usually has no more than a week to produce a quick flyer or social media post for the dining halls.

More recently, she’s worked on decorating the sneeze guards that have been installed to mitigate infection from COVID-19. Horejs explains that when given assignments like these, she also must keep in mind how the design functions with the rest of the kitchen.

We’re trying to hide to backs of some panini presses right now.

Lynzie Horejs

Unfortunately, the pandemic resulted in Horejs being furloughed with Aramark foods. This led to her getting another gig, this time with KCommunications, a small communications firm in Chicago that offered her a virtual internship.

She’s continued to design for the food industry, producing more menu boards and social media content mainly for KCommunication’s biggest client, Mitsuwa Martketplace, just south of Arlington Heights.

Menu boards for Mitsuwa Marketplace by Lynzie Horejs

To look for graphics, this job has given Horejs experience with Canva, which she describes as “graphic design software for people who aren’t graphic designers.”

In the future, however, Horejs hopes to no longer rely on websites and software to supply her with graphics, as she’s now working on making her own illustrations.