I design how organizations talk with people. That includes teaching machines to do it too.

I work across art direction, campaigns, brand, content, and experience design — agency-side and in-house — currently leading conversation design for healthcare AI.

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The story so far

Same calling, new materials.

AGE 11

The calling

A kid in Chicago decides she's going to be a designer. The decision sticks.

THE LAB YEARS

X-Acto in one hand, mouse in the other

Graphic design at Columbia College Chicago, learning the trade where paste-up boards and the first Macintoshes shared the same lab.

NEW YORK

52mm, the studio years

Co-founds a design studio in New York. Showtime, the NHL, and VH1 on the client list; a Broadcast Designers Association Silver for “Behind the Music”; two ADC Young Guns wins; and her handwriting released as the typeface Divine.

2001–2008

Fire and glass

Back in Chicago, learns glassblowing from her husband Peter. Together they build F2, a design-glass practice with a West Loop gallery — and press in Dwell, Chicago magazine, and the Tribune.

2008–2014

Season after season

Marketing director and designer for fashion retailers, running seasonal campaigns end to end on retail's relentless calendar: managing budgets and media buys, and developing creative concepts for everything from online presence to print campaigns.

2014–2020

The campaign years

Art direction at StudioNorth — integrated campaigns for B2B technology, healthcare, and nonprofit brands — then U.S. Cellular, where she concepts and art directs VRX, a 360° VR retail experience for associates nationwide.

2020

Healthcare, for humans

Joins one of the country's largest health systems to advocate for healthcare consumers — including redesigning the hospital bill itself.

THE ESSAYS

Writing through it

After unexpectedly losing her spouse, begins Digital Widow — essays on what falls away and what remains when change, grief, and technology collide.

THE AI TURN

Teaching machines to talk

Leads conversation design for Grace, a health system's AI assistant — and writes the organization's first conversation design standards. Still designing. Still saying yes to new materials.

Featured case study

Grace: giving a health system a voice

Grace is an AI voice assistant that helps patients manage appointments — verify, schedule, reschedule, and cancel — without pretending to be human. Behind it: the persona, tone ladder, and conversation design standards in the Helix design system, plus the voice, chat, and SMS flows behind it.

Design standards Voice flows Pattern library 2-min video

Read the case study →

“This is Grace, an AI-powered assistant ready to help with scheduling, rescheduling, canceling, and verifying appointments.”

Opening line, Grace voice flow. One persona, three modalities, zero first-person pronouns.

Designer, writer, and unapologetic generalist. Two-time ADC Young Guns winner. My handwriting is a licensed typeface. More about me →

Currently

Open to conversations about design leadership, AI, writing, conversational design...and anything creative. marilyn@marilynfrank.com

© 2026 Marilyn Frank