Spring Commencement 2024: Brittiany Rorrer, College of Visual and Performing Arts

April 29, 2024

Look through Brittiany Rorrer’s sketchbooks, and you’ll find all sorts of images hand-rendered in ink or pencil, sometimes painted in bright acrylics or shaded in subdued watercolors.

On the pages of the senior design major’s many Moleskines, fish stand on two legs and strike defiant poses while cherub-faced peaches enjoy music through bulbous headphones. There are teakettles that sport swan-necked spouts and rows of curvy balloon animals. Wolf skulls are etched in stark detail even as nearby, grinning cartoon dogs model cardigans. Lonely slugs gaze out of big city windows while a glum-faced self-portrait of the artist declares: “I have a cold.”

And although Rorrer’s drawings often evoke the free-form feeling of doodles, they’re organized on the page, purposeful and neat, and they display the confident line of an artist.

Rorrer transferred to Radford from New River Community College in 2021, and since then she has mined these notebooks and her own considerable talent to bring home a raft of prizes for her work. Over the past three years, she’s received eight student “Addy” awards from Western Virginia Advertising, a mixture of gold and silver and Judge’s Choice, among other accolades.

This year, she also scored her second regional nod from the American Advertising Federation (AAF), which means that, in May, a calendar she designed will compete at the AAF’s national level.

While her projects ultimately take physical or electronic forms, they all begin life through her pen or pencil, as drawings and mind maps and mood boards, which she then converts using digital software.

“Word plus image, as my professors would say,” Rorrer explained when asked what initially drew her to study design.

“I've always loved illustration, and I've always thought it would be fun to see my work on products you could find online or in the store,” she said. “This led to me asking a lot of questions about if this was even possible: What kind of programs are used to illustrate product packaging? What is the language of typography, and how can I use it in my work? Can I make a career out of this? 

“Thankfully, I was able to find the answers to these questions and a lot more during my time at Radford University,” she said.

Radford Assistant Professor of Graphic Design John O’Connor was Rorrer’s instructor for more than a half-dozen courses she took, and he served as her mentor when she participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program.

“Her innate talent surpasses any superlative I can conjure,” O’Connor recently said.  

“Her passion for creation and design is palpable, effortlessly transforming even the most challenging tasks into remarkable achievements,” he explained. “The sky truly is the limit for whatever career path she chooses.”

A Hillsville, Virginia, native, Rorrer commutes from home for classes, a proximity she considers an advantage.

“I have a lot of family in Southwest Virginia, and it’s important to me to stay close to them while also getting more higher education,” she said.

She’s also spent the past two years in an internship with CMR Institute, a Roanoke company that provides continuing education to medical industry professionals in the fields of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biotech.

“I had the wonderful opportunity to work on illustrations, branding, infographics, motion graphics and traditional 2-D animation,” she said of her time with CMR.

As graduation looms, Rorrer is still weighing whether she wants to continue her education, but she ultimately hopes to find a career in the field she loves.

“I plan to apply for as many jobs as possible, being that graphic design is very competitive,” Rorrer said, adding, “I feel like the folio I've developed here will help me get those jobs.”