The mastermind behind the design

As you make your way through the current issue of Fra Noi, enjoying page after page of well-written, informative and engaging articles, please pause this time around to appreciate how expertly those pages are put together.

Check out the row of eye-catching photos on the cover, the orderly accounting of features in the table of contents, the clearly delineated folios at the top and bottom of each page, and the inviting styles and sizes of the various typefaces throughout.

Each of those has been carefully crafted to grab your attention, point you in the right direction, let you know where you are and draw you into the reading experience.

There’s an art and a science to publication design, and we’re beyond lucky to have a master of that profession in our creative director, Mary Racila. I may be the public face of Fra Noi, but Mary is just as pivotal to our success, and she has been with the magazine almost as long as I have.

Born in Elmhurst and raised in Oak Brook, Mary took the first steps along her career path while working at her father’s advertising and design firm in high school and earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a minor in pre-law, graduating summa cum laude.

Her father was a friend and supporter of the Rev. Lawrence Cozzi at a time when Fra Noi was a publication of Friends of the Villa for the Needy, the small charitable that he had created. (Fra Noi, September 2026)

Mary started out as Fr. Cozzi’s personal assistant, transitioning to part-time work at Fra Noi in 1993, when she was a college sophomore and I was only three years into my tenure as editor. We’ve been at the helms of our respective realms ever since.

Back when she signed on, there was no internet, email was in its infancy and desktop publishing was a gleam in some programmer’s eye. Fra Noi was a tabloid newspaper that was spat out on printers in bits and pieces and waxed onto boards for conversion into plates at Des Plaines Publishing.

Mary was among the first designers to embrace desktop publishing. With it, she ushered Fra Noi into the digital era, riding herd on three major revamps of the newspaper before transforming it into the gorgeous, glossy magazine you hold in your hands. To this day, she’s the only designer to have an actual page layout trademarked.

Mary isn’t your typical publication designer, toiling anonymously behind the scenes. She has earned a following of her own in our community thanks to the countless eye-popping ads she has designed, and the volunteer work she’s done for Festa Italiana, Casa Italia, the Italian American Veterans Museum and other events and organizations. She’s also well known to the thousands of followers of our Facebook group, which she manages.

And while she has been working nearly full time at Fra Noi, she has been building a freelance clientele nationwide. With a staff of 10, Racila Design caters to property developers, financial institutions, publishers, food and bio-tech companies, not-for-profits, small businesses and government offices. Her clients includes companies such as Nike, Habitat for Humanity, Innovation & Tech Today magazine, Ajinomoto Foods and multi-family real estate developer Holland Partner Group.

She and her husband, Jeff Folsom, moved to the West Coast 12 years ago, first to Oregon and then to Washington State, where they live in a beach house on the Pacific Ocean with their beloved dogs: a Leonberger named Leo and a Bernese Mountain Dog named Lucy.

To know Mary is to admire her. Driven, resilient and above all kind, she’s as deeply principled as she is profoundly creative and skilled.

Safe within her haven on the coast, she’s hard at work on the next graphical incarnation of Fra Noi. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.

The above article appears in the November 2026 issue of the print version of Fra Noi. Our gorgeous, monthly magazine contains a veritable feast of news and views, profiles and features, entertainment and culture.

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