LatinUs Beauty
Brand Strategy & Creative Direction
latinusbeauty.com
Mexico City
LatinUs Beauty is a haircare brand founded by industry veterans from Pantene and Herbal Essence, built for Latinas. Science-backed formulas rooted in Latino hair traditions, distributed nationally through Walmart. When I joined, the brand had a product and a mission, but no consolidated visual language and no content system that could scale.
My scope expanded well beyond art direction from the start. I built the brand's visual identity system from zero, defining guidelines that had to work across social media, packaging, campaign content, talent-led activations and retail simultaneously. I managed multicultural creative teams across Mexico and the United States, coordinated external vendors, photographers, stylists and influencers, and handled budget allocation and approval workflows in direct contact with the founders.
The content strategy had to resolve a specific tension: the brand was premium in its formulation but needed to feel genuinely close to its audience. Too polished and it would lose credibility. Too casual and it would undercut the product's authority. Every creative decision, from casting to color palette to tone of voice in captions, was a strategic call about where on that spectrum the brand should live in a given moment.
I also built the internal process: briefing frameworks, production workflows, content calendars, approval cycles. The brand grew from a startup with no visual consistency into a recognizable identity with a documented system that could be handed to any creative team and replicated.
LatinUs Beauty Brand Strategy Framework
Strategic foundation
Visual identity system
Brand Map, Brand Book, Design System
Content strategy
Social, PR, Branded Content, Live MKT, UGC
Talent & influencers
Selection, briefing, production, activation
Cultural insight
Latina identity is plural, not a single aesthetic
Brand positioning
Premium science + cultural rootedness
Creative bridge
Brainstorms, frameworks, workflows, approvals
Budget & data
Allocation, performance, iteration, pivoting
Team mgmt
Multidisciplinar & multicultural guidance
Activations & training
Campaigns
Omnichannel execution & performance tracking
Brand system scalable across markets
Consistent identity from startup to national retail launch
Costumer journey monitoring
Segmentation, targeting, CRM & costumer service
Creative pillars
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes
Lago
Communications Direction & Brand Strategy
lagolatam.com
Mexico City
LAGO is a platform dedicated to Latin American design, operating across retail, events, editorial and cultural programming. As Communications Director, I was responsible for the strategic planning across all of those fronts, not just the creative execution.
The challenge with LAGO was coherence. A brand that operates across multiple formats and contexts needs a central idea strong enough to hold everything together, and flexible enough not to become rigid. I developed the communications strategy, planned and produced events, directed the visual identity across store and digital touchpoints, and managed the relationships with designers, collaborators and press.
The work required understanding LAGO's audience not just demographically, but culturally. Latin American design is not a single aesthetic tradition. It is a conversation between many traditions, some in tension with each other. The communications strategy had to reflect that complexity without turning it into noise.
Lago Communications Strategy Framework
Cultural insight
LATAM design is plural, not singular
Brand narrative
Comms strategy across all formats
Designer relations
Selection, briefing, press coordination
Digital transformation
E-commerce, CRM
& DTC planning
Strategic foundation
Visual identity
Store, digital, editorial touchpoints
Event production
Caravana Americana, Mercadito Escondido
Retail Opps.
Inventory control, training, safety, activations & cross brand partnerships
Retail stores
Polanco, Juárez, Roma
Norte, Cabo
Design markets
Trade shows, biannual events
Platform authority
LATAM design reference
Designer pipeline
Emerging brands across
6 countries
Creative pillars
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes
Mana
@_manamoda
Mexico City
MANA started as an ethical fashion brand and became something larger: a framework for thinking and talking about what fashion costs, and who pays for it.
I founded the brand, developed the creative and commercial identity, and built a parallel education practice around it. I designed and delivered tailor-made workshops and consultancy on sustainable design processes, waste management in the textile industry, natural dyeing, upcycling and responsible consumption for institutions and organizations across Mexico.
I wrote for La Tempestad, one of Mexico's most respected cultural and arts publications, contributing to the conversation around fashion, culture and sustainability. I collaborated with Carla Fernandez, whose practice sits at the intersection of indigenous Mexican craft traditions, contemporary fashion and social responsibility. Through the Ethical Fashion Space, I engaged with a global network of practitioners building a more accountable industry.
MANA is not a case study in scale. It is a case study in conviction, in building a communications framework around a complex idea, and in teaching that idea to audiences ranging from design students to corporate teams. The skills that run through it, cultural analysis, audience translation, narrative development, workshop facilitation, are the same ones I bring to brand strategy work.
Mana Brand & Education Strategy Framework
Brand thesis
Fashion with passion
& responsibility
Brand identity
Visual system, editorial, campaigns
Supply chain
Artisans, artists, community exchange
Collections
Natural dyeing,
upcycling, ecoprint
Strategic foundation
Activist brand
Fashion with measurable impact & purpose
Material sourcing
Brand stock surplus, natural MX inputs
Retail & events
Fairs, pop-ups
design stores
Collaborations
Carla Fernandez, Ethical Fashion Space
Digital presence
Instagram,
editorial features
Education platform
Design Thinking, Speculative Design
Institutions
Universities, orgs,
corporate teams
Workshops
Circular economy, knowledge transfer
Specialist
presence in MX
institutions + global network
Content & press
La Tempestad, trend forecasting
Authorial output
Articles, studies, investigations
Thought leadership
Autoral voice insustainable fashion
Creative pillars
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes
3xt
Creative Agency Co-Founder
São Paulo
3XT was a creative agency I co-founded with fashion journalist and producer Letícia Santos. We built it around a specific belief: that fashion and beauty brands deserved creative partners who understood both the cultural context and the business reality of the work.
We worked with the most important titles and brands in Brazilian fashion. Vogue Brasil, GQ Brasil, Harper's Bazaar Brasil, Elle, Candy. Carmen Steffens, Dafiti, H.Stern, Iguatemi, Reinaldo Lourenço, Gloria Coelho, Forum, Berlan. Photographers including J.R. Duran, Luiz Tripolli, Bob Wolfenson and Gleeson Paulino.
What I actually did in those seven years was run a brand strategy and creative operation with no room for error. Every project involved a brief, a creative territory, a production plan, a budget and a team assembled specifically for that job. I managed relationships with talent and vendors whose time and reputation were expensive, which meant every creative decision had to be defensible before it went to a client.
The editorial work taught me how a brand idea becomes an image that carries meaning without a caption to explain it. The commercial work taught me how to translate that into something that moves product. Running the agency taught me how both of those things have to be grounded in numbers that work.
3xt Brand Strategy Framework
Agency thesis
Fashion & beauty brands deserve better partners
Client brief
Brand objective
+ business context
Editorial direction
Vogue, GQ, Harper's,
Elle, Candy
Executive production
Logistics, schedules, budget allocation & negotiation
Talent management
Cast, brief, allocate,
org charts, staffing
Editorial output
Covers, shoots,
press features
Agency operations
Portfolio, pricing,
biz dev, budget
Client management
Present, align,
approve, deliver
Strategic foundation
Creative strategy
Visual identity, brand territory, campaigns
Commercial output
Campaigns, catalogues, brand identity
Agency roster
Cultural relevance
+ commercial ROI
Cultural authority
Brazil's top fashion
titles & brands
Set & experience
Set design, stands, SPFW productions
On-site production
Set build, installation,
venue coordination
Design oversight
Materials, permits, timelines, execution fidelity
Live MKT
SPFW, fairs,
retail activations
Creative pillars
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes
Harper's Bazaar Brasil
Visual Identity & Editorial Launch
harpersbazaar.uol.com.br
São Paulo
Harper's Bazaar Brasil did not exist before this project. I was part of the founding team at Carta Editorial brought in to build the Brazilian edition from scratch, working directly alongside editor-in-chief Ines Nespoli.
The work was a translation problem as much as a design problem. Harper's Bazaar is one of the world's oldest luxury fashion titles, with a visual language built over more than a century. The brief was to honor that authority while building something that felt specifically and unapologetically Brazilian. Getting that balance wrong in either direction would have been visible on every newsstand in the country.
I created the visual guidelines: editorial graphic design, typography system, layout architecture, and the visual concepts for the fashion shoots. I assembled and managed the creative team across each issue. The decisions made in those first months established the visual identity that carried the title through its launch and into the market.
Harper's Bazaar Brasil Brand Strategy Framework
Fashion shoots
Iconic editorials,
luxury campaigns
Founding credit
Deputy Art Director, founding team
Design oversight
Execution fidelity,
on-site creative direction
Translation brief
Global authority
+ Brazilian voice
Visual identity
Graphic system,
layout architecture
Art & print mgmt
Art team, graphic production, printing
Founding team
Carta Editorial
+ Hearst alignment
Cross-dept. alignment
Editorial, fashion,
production, board
Print edition
Covers, layouts,
editorial features
Strategic foundation
Talent coordination
Photographers,
stylists, models
Editorial concepts
Visual storytelling
Visual identity
System that carried HB Brasil at launch
Brand translation
Global DNA adapted for Brazilian market
Creative pillars
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes
Berlan
Brand Identity
berlan.com.br
São Paulo
Berlan arrived as a blank page. No established visual language, no existing brand system, no precedent to work from or react against. The brief was to build a complete identity from the ground up, covering logo, packaging, social media, set design and all audiovisual material.
Starting from zero is a particular discipline. Every decision becomes foundational because there is nothing before it to build on or correct. The logo sets the tone for the packaging. The packaging sets the tone for the campaigns. The campaigns set the audience's expectations for everything that comes after. I worked through that sequence deliberately, making sure each layer of the brand's identity was a coherent extension of the one before it.
The result was a full brand system, built to hold across physical and digital touchpoints from launch day.
Berlan Brand Identity Strategy Framework
Blank page brief
No identity, no system,
no precedent
Brand identity
Logo, typography,
color, visual language
Sequential logic
Each decision sets
tone for all after
Design system
rand book, guidelines, application rules
Strategic foundation
Creative pillars
Supplier coordination
Materials, packaging,
print production
Physical touchpoints
Packaging,
catalogues, events
Full brand system
Consistent across
all touchpoints
Digital touchpoints
Social media,
digital campaigns
Design oversight
Execution fidelity,
approvals, delivery
Remarkable brand
Scalable identity
built from zero
Operational layer
Market touchpoints
Business outcomes