Cristina Gabriele

Cristina Gabriele is a seasoned communications designer with over 15 years of experience in the design industry. She leads her somatic design practice, Messwork, which facilitates personal transformation and practice building in the alternative health sphere. Through Messwork, Cristina supports the rehabilitation of creatives using trauma-informed practices and intuitive making. She also operates her namesake design consultancy, Cg Studio, and is a somatic practitioner, design strategist, professor, copywriter, artist, researcher, and lecturer.

In the Spring ’24 semester, Cristina co-launched the CTL’s Faculty Personal Transformation Pilot Program with Pratt colleagues, extending her Messwork offerings to faculty members. Additionally, she founded the contemporary jewellery label Heart & Noble and ACME, a women’s initiative that helps individuals navigate collective spaces and institutions. These initiatives reflect the ongoing themes in her work at Messwork, Cg Studio, and Pratt Institute, where she explores personal and collective transformation, systems design, ethnography, and integrating the body’s wisdom into design practices.

Cristina’s work spans somatic realms, focusing on rehabilitative visual communication, art direction, identity systems, brand collateral, copywriting, strategy, positioning, and product design. She has collaborated with esteemed organisations such as Oscar de la Renta, Harper’s Bazaar, L’Officiel Germany, CR Fashion Book, Frog Design, and Invista. Cristina was also a founding member of the Manufacture New York Pilot Program. She teaches and is the affinity lead for Thesis I & II in the Graduate Communications Design department and has co-organised the Other Islands Book Fair with Chairperson Gaia Hwang for the past two years.

MFA, Communications Design, Pratt Institute
BA, Psychology and Business, Northeastern University