Artist Profile – Author, illustrator and idea guru

Aileen Bennett is on Fire

And she’s telling us what it means to Be You

By Patrice Doucet

Photos by Sarah Soprano

Even as a 3-year-old, Aileen Bennett would critique the design of her cereal box, telling her mother, as they strolled through the grocery store, that she wanted to design Corn Flakes boxes when she grew up. “I didn’t know what it was called, but I could see myself doing it,” says Bennett who now owns a graphic design company in Lafayette, under her name, where she is creative director, ideas person, brand developer, professional speaker, illustrator and writer.

Growing up just outside of Essex, England, Bennett says she always wanted “nicely designed stuff.” At 10 she was reading “Ad Week” and had aspirations of being an ad agency director, but her school’s career counselor discouraged the idea. As she recalls, “He said I couldn’t do that because I didn’t come from a posh place and recommended that I work at a bank instead. Luckily I ignored him and fought to become a designer – I was feisty then.” At 13 she found a graphic designer to speak to at her school and convinced the headmaster that technical drawing would be a good career for her.

Later she went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the University of Central Lancashire. Staying true to her vision, her first job was developing packaging for a supermarket. She explains her fascination saying, “With packaging you have to delve in the psyche of the group you’re targeting, and your design is only as good as the results you get.”

After a few years in London, she went freelance and taught at a college where she discovered a passion for professional speaking. She was named ‘Top Humorous Speaker in the UK and Ireland’ by Toastmasters International, which launched her speaking career. For 10 years she captivated and entertained audiences with her British wit.

Bennett moved to Louisiana, with her Cajun husband, in 2002 and has since charmed her way into the community and won the respect of the business and arts sector.

Many readers of “The Acadiana Advocate” and “The Times of Acadiana” know Bennett from her regular column “Be You” that she’s written for 15 years. It’s a fun Q & A read about interesting people, and has become so much a part of her identity that “Be You” is her license plate.

A graphic designer for 34 years, Bennett has a love for business as much as creativity, leading her to consult for some of the area’s top companies helping them improve customer service, communications and develop branding. Her fact-finding methods of pulling information for branding included oddball questions like “If your company was a smell or a surprise anniversary gift, what would it be? or “If you were a celebrity spokesperson who would you be and why?”

This year she is trying to restrict her work to mostly illustrations, recently launching a T-shirt for Parish Rice. It was while undergoing chemo treatment for breast cancer in 2018 that she began to discover the relaxation – and talent – in drawing. Her absolute favorite illustrations are of incredibly ordinary things, what she calls on her Instagram “Everyday Curious,” like a potato or an English biscuit. “I’m secretly working on some things on toast,” she adds with all seriousness. “Time goes by when I’m illustrating and I feel like a child again.”

In 2020 she began illustrating professionally with notable works including the life-size immersive drawing of a café, complete with fireplace and chairs, at the Acadiana Center for the Arts. She also illustrated a mural in the Labor & Delivery Unit at Ochsner Lafayette General. An accomplished painter as well, her scenes from all the places she’s lived have been on display in Opelousas and Basin Arts in Lafayette.

A published author and illustrator of several books, Bennett recently celebrated the publication of her latest work, “A Little Book of Fire [and the people who have it inside them],” which came out at the end of September. Inspired to write it during her illness she reveals, “When I was sick, my main fear was not getting my drive back. Before cancer, I would do eight things before breakfast. I wrote this book to make myself feel better about being human. Despite something you’re going through, your spark doesn’t disappear and will be reignited.”

When talking about inspiration Bennett compares it to the use of a muscle; the more you do, the easier it comes. She shares, “I do a lot of research – information is interesting and sexy to me. I did a whole thing on watermelons. I look at Instagram, the graphic designs down the street. I take pictures of colors that I like together. The more you start noticing beautiful things, the more beautiful things you’ll see. I have a Google alert for the words “clever design.” If something has an extra meaning behind it, it’s beautiful to me. It’s one of my greatest joys.”

Bennett works from a little studio in her backyard. One side is minimalistic and clean and the other half is filled with paintings and crafts. “I feel that’s what I’m like on the inside,” she quips. A sign on her wall that reads ”As Soon As I Sat Down and Began, I was OK” may best explain how she handles the fire inside her. “I’m an early morning person, working from 5 a.m. til…whenever, depending on how exciting things are. I’ll often stop and play ping pong with my husband when he comes home from work.”

As our conversation winds down, I ask Bennett a question she always asks at the end of her “Be You” column, which is “What’s a question that I didn’t ask that you wish I had?” To which she responds, “’What’s next?’ And it depends on what happens with the book. In the meantime, a lot of hard work that people won’t see. I had my tarot cards read recently and the first three were fire signs: the idea, the building of a structure, the toil labor and hard work – that’s what’s next.”