Yen Azzaro is an artist, illustrator, and graphic recorder accepting projects all over the world.
02/25/2026
I want to thank the City of Lansing, Michigan Innovation Team for welcoming me so warmly to the Lansing Energy Innovation Summit. In a short amount of time, potent ideating took groups through discussions around energy efficiency and access (including its potential pain points and barriers), then conceiving of and fleshing out four concepts for further development. Impressive!
Thanks especially to Cortnie Squirewell at the Innovation Team for continuing to value my work in this space.
01/26/2026
I’m having trouble focusing on work.
Where did critical thinking skills go? Do we no longer value human lives over ideology?
All I can see in my mind is the mass of bodies on top of Alex Pretti. I wonder if he knew his end of life was imminent the way George Floyd did? There’s been so much pain and it NEEDS TO STOP.
For those that say Alex Pretti was a threat, Explain It To Me Like I’m a 5 Year Old was made for you.
Rest in power, Alex Pretti. Rest in power, Renee Good.
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About 8 years ago I had returned home to Ann Arbor and couldn’t find this elusive thing called a j-o-b. Having just left my dream job dealing prominent American art works to collectors and museums nationwide, returning without a prospect was really scary. My dear friend and career counselor at University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design, John Luther, introduced me to this thing called “graphic recording”, the practice of synthesizing content in real time and distilling it down to illustration and text on large sheets of paper.
After a pretty nerve-wracking all-day session for the Michigan Medicine, I got a smattering of calls here and there over the next couple years. But over the last 5 years I’ve had the privilege of being the fly(girl) on the wall for companies and organizations such as The Kresge Foundation, Ford Motor Co., Domino’s, Harman, Michigan Department of Education and more. It’s enlightening, at times grueling, and a pretty physically and mentally exhausting job. But still, I love it. I love the illustration aspect the most so over the last year I’ve started focusing on sketch notes, the smaller, more discreet version of graphic recording. There’s no aspect of large spectacle in front of the crowd but sometimes that doesn’t work.
The application outcome for a sketch note is still the same. You can share it internally to gain interest from colleagues, share it externally for customers and stakeholders, use it for marketing, social media, print it, send it with a press release...the possibilities are endless and now I’m looking to do something larger, with small-scale sketch notes. Do you have a space to fill, a milestone to capture, or an idea you’d like to collaborate on?
