Dr. Leonie Lynch is a PhD graduate from the Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick. She also has a 1st Class Honors Marketing Masters from the same and a Honors Degree in Fine Art Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design. Leonie’s PhD research ‘Abstracting Brands: Visual Literacy and the Making of Orla Kiely’ is a significant contribution to knowledge as it brings visual literacy and visual language thinking into the field of consumer research. This study examines visual literacy and its key components – visual language, visual perception, visual thinking, visual learning and visual communication within the context of consumer culture. While visual literacy is the primary lens used in her research, and forms its conceptual foundation, a number of other disciplines, i.e. consumer research, design theory, and art and aesthetics have been assembled to further inform the theoretical framework. Key questions centre on how brands facilitate visual literacy and how consumers deploy it using brands? Orla Kiely was the brand used to frame this study.