Search for the most bizarre truths of 2026, and you may come face-to-face with the colorful work of a Ringling College grad.
Julia Louisa Moellman (nee DeJoseph) ’14, Graphic and Interactive Communication, was responsible for designing the cover of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Wired Into Weird, the 2026 publication by the 107-year-old purveyor of the world’s strangest truths.
During her 10 years at the Ripley’s franchise, Moellman, now a senior graphic designer for the marketing team, has contributed to a wide array of projects, including merchandise, attraction galleries, and the company’s 100-year anniversary logo. She played a big role in designing marketing materials for a London exhibit centered on Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children—a book she had been assigned while studying at Ringling College. Her work on the exhibit received final approval from Tim Burton directly.
For the book cover, Moellman and her team gathered copious inspiration from existing designs they saw around them. “It was like the ultimate scavenger hunt for ideas,” she said. “We looked at makeup palettes, paper stocks, current book covers, building facades, window displays, shoes, clothing, textures, color combinations, and more.” Then, Moellman began filtering those materials through the lens of vivid colors and technology.
“A few months earlier, while I was redesigning our company-wide logo, we had talked a lot about Ripley’s becoming increasingly future-facing,” she said, “from new interactive experiences to remote-controlled robot characters appearing throughout our attractions in the form of humanoids and dogs. I became interested in finding a balance between that technological future and the creative, distinctly human side of it.”
The final design features a watery, saturated cyclone of color against a circuit board backdrop, centered on a human eye.
Moellman said working for Ripley’s has been her dream job, adding, “I’ve always been a bit of an oddity myself.” She believes her time as a Ringling student helped prepare her for the broad-ranging, collaborative work she does now.
“Ringling taught me to look at the larger scope of a project,” she said, “not just the design itself, but the research behind it and making sure every detail has a purpose.
“I really feel like my degree isn’t one-dimensional. That’s probably the best way I can describe what Ringling prepared me for: not just being a graphic designer, but being someone who can research, communicate, problem-solve, collaborate, and think about how all the pieces of a project fit together.”
