I design across disciplines, working on everything from signage and websites to brands, typefaces, sculptures, exhibitions, and print. I’m interested in a broad, evolving practice that brings ideas to life across mediums and scales, moving fluidly between graphic design, art, objects, and architecture. My work combines playful typography, materiality, creative direction, experimentation and making.
Contact
Always looking to make exciting work with like-minded people.
Get in touch!
helensywalski@gmail.com >>
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Currently
Creative Design Lead Once–Future Office.
Collaborating with Michael Angelo Prisco through Heavy Letters.
Education
The Cooper Union
Awards
SEGD, Finalist in Branded Environments, 2024
Graphis Design Annual Competition,
Gold in Exhibit Design, 2018
Core77 Design Awards, 2018 Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship, 2015
Mentorship and Academic Engagement
Mentor, AIGA AMP, 2025, 2026
Guest Critic, Rhode Island School of Design
Guest Critic, The Cooper Union
Capabilities
Art Direction
Branding
Campaigns
Content Development
Creative Direction
Custom Typefaces
Exhibitions
Placemaking
Publications
Sculpture
Strategy
Signage and Wayfinding
User Experience
Websites
Collaborators and Clients
AIANY/Center for Architecture
Brookyln Historical Society
Buffalo AKG Art Museum
De La Vega Designs
Campaign Finance Board, NYCVotes
Cooper Hewitt
Galaxy Digital
GreeNYC
Lever Architecture
Library of Congress
Lisa Stimpson
Mayor's Office for Climate and Environmental Justice,
Marian Goodman Gallery
MoMA
Museum of Jewish Heritage
Michael Maltzan Architecture
Museum of the City of New York
New York Public Library
OMA
Once–Future Office
Parsons Healthy Materials Lab
Portland State University
The Portland Museum of Art
Princetion School of Architecture
Pure+Applied
Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Studio Gang
TASCHEN
Toledo Museum of Art
Young Projects
Vancouver Art Gallery
Press
Michael Maltzan Architecture, Studio Zewde, and Once-Future Office to overhaul Toledo Museum of Art’s galleries, The Architect's Newspaper, 2024
Built By New York featured in Oculus Magazine, 2024
Built By New York, a new exhibition for the Center for Architecture featured in The Architect's Newspaper, 2024
Galaxy Digital featured in Architectural Record, 2023
Galaxy Digital wins Best of the Year by Interior Design, 2023
Galaxy Digital wins NYC X DESIGN Interior Design Award for Tech Office
New York Public Library's Treasures exhibition features in The New York Times, 2021
Featured in: Takenobu Igarashi Pushed the Parameters of Typography with His Hand-drawn 3D Letterforms, AIGA Eye on Deisgn, 2020
Type High, Sculptural Letterforms By Winners of the Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship Opens in New York, It's Nice That 2018
The 3D Letterforms the Rhoda Lubalin Fellowship Winners Made are a Type Designer’s Dream, AIGA Eye On Design, 2018
News + Process
In Construction!
Establishing a different type of hub for convening, The David Rubenstien Treehouse at Harvard University with Studio Gang
New project launching soon!
An ongoing archive website dedicated to documenting mascaron ornaments wherever we find them
News! Michael Maltzan Architecture, Studio Zewde, and Once-Future Office to overhaul Toledo Museum of Art’s galleries
"The reinstallation will provide a chronological journey through art history, guiding visitors from antiquity to the present day, tracing the cultural connections between geographies that the current galleries understate. The new presentation will showcase a fuller breadth of human cultural creativity, telling both a more accurate and inclusive history. The redesigned galleries will feature fresh updates to showcase the variety and quality of TMA’s collection, including innovative uses of technology." –Toledo Museum of Art
Top: Curators working in a workshop to arrange the collection chronologically
Bottom: Our site visit captured by the Google Street car
New!
De La Vega Designs
Identity/Website
Experimentation and Custimization
Renderings for custom deisnged 3D printed character set for Galaxy Digitla's office in NYC
News! Once–Future will lead the signage and wayfinding visitor experience for this ambitious project in Portland, Maine.
Our team, lead by LEVER Architecture, has been selected to design the Portland Museum of Art’s $100 million campus expansion and unification project.
Once–Future Office site visit at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Prototyping
Signage and wayfinding for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Behind the Scenes
Object review for the New York Public Library Treasures Exhibition
Helen and Michael as counterforms for one of their sculptures for Type High
Experimenting with Blender
