Senior Frank Luera was exposed to art at an early age by his aunt, an art professor at San Diego University.

He first became aware of his talent when he took an art class in high school.

“I did the usual drawing with crayons. I used to think I was terrible, until I took a freshman high school art class and the teacher told me my stuff was decent,” said Luera. “That’s [when] art really returned to my life.”

Luera’s artistic talents recently gained him national exposure.

His artwork, Tree of Life: Las Frutas de Nuestras Cultura was used as the cover of The Voice of Hispanic Higher Education magazine. A friend, without his knowledge, submitted the artwork.

“Honestly I never heard of the magazine but once I realized the enormity, I was taken aback,” said Luera.

Luera got his start desgining artwork for campus events when he joined the St. John’s Advertising Club. Three months after he started, Luera was offered a job working for Campus Activities.

Currently, Luera works alongside two fellow students, Maxell Strizich and Rodney Hazard, designing flyers for St. John’s University.

They work together as a team to build off each other’s design ideas, and together, they create art to promote various events on campus.

Since his beginnings as a graphic designer, Luera has worked on numerous posters.
Recently, he designed the poster for The Hangover and the homecoming events.
“For homecoming I wanted everything to have this 1920s Parisian art deco feel to it,” said Luera.

“It was a great time period for design, and [I] felt it would give homecoming this timeless traditional feel to it.”
Although he has worked mainly with graphic design, Luera said he would also like to venture into different artistic endeavors in the future.

“Because I’m constantly working on projects, I don’t have much time to experiment with other media,”
said Luera.

“However I would like to extend beyond just using a computer to design things, I would like to work with watercolors and also screen printing.”

Although he will be graduating in May, Luera would like to pursue a more creative job as a graphic designer.

“Looking forward, I would like to have a career that is artistic[ly] based,” he said.

Luera said it can be challenging to come up with ideas constantly.

“It isn’t always easy to think of a design when you’re given complete creative freedom, just staring at a blank computer screen hoping you think of some idea your client likes,” he said.

“So it does help to know what it is they would like even if it’s something as vague as them wanting me to use the color blue for example.”

But as far as inspiration goes, Luera does not limit himself to any one thing.

“Every time I get a new project I look everywhere for design,” said Luera. “I turn it into a reality.”