My core skill is design, understood as visual representation, but my Business degree with a marketing concentration and my advertising carreer have turned me into a problem solver where design can be best understood as a process.
Working solo or as part of a team, design thinking is my oyster.
My mind is a conference room where design, strategy and technology confer 24/7 without the hassle of emails or phone calls. I strive to have a 360 of the project.
This solid foundation and skillset allows me to communicate efficiently with clients and team members and to provide a path that integrates the marketing realities with the creative process into a solution that just makes sense.
Typically my work is received with enthusiasm and praise, and, most importantly, produces the intended response in the marketplace.
A great logo kickstarts the business cycle by engaging both external and internal clients. It motivates the team and magically turns the product idea into an attainable reality. Externally, logo design will weigh heavily in determining how the product is received and remembered. Below are a few examples from many walks of life.
⇑ In banner above, the magazine ad. Interestingly enough, and in spite of digitalization, Colombians still read paper magazines. This magazine has over 250,000 subscribers!
I was given a gargantuan task: to sell Ciudad Salitre, an undeveloped tract of land almost the size New York’s Central Park. The plan was to support two malls, hundreds of businesses and 10,000 homes in 600 acres of land embedded in the middle of Bogota.
The solution was to keep it simple. The campaign revolved around a diminutive man with arrows for hands and seven words: “Tenemos 600 acres para su mega-proyecto inmobiliario”–We have 600 acres for your real estate mega-project.
That did the trick: the project sold within 16 months.
No design rules here…
When I worked for Omnicom, the agency wanted exposure to Coca-Cola, one of the juiciest, most lucrative accounts to grace the Colombian brand pantheon. The opportunity came when Coca-Cola launched a contest among the largest advertising agencies in Bogota for its year-end Christmas card.
They selected two winners from hundreds of designs submitted. Both were designed by me! That was be two thumbs up for me from Omnicom.
-Above, the oversized institutional design.
-Left, the consumer slider card.
Advertising is a brand’s battleground. It’s where it should be at its very best.
In the pieces below, I did most of it: positioning concept, creativity, design, illustration and digital manipulation.
This time around, Pfizer knocked on my door. That didn’t happen every day! The problem: they wanted to sell a new coronary disease drug with virtually no side-effects, which was unheard of at the time. They wanted to make a splash and to differentiate themselves from the pack. Medical visitors would regularly visit doctors with a sea of literature, and it was easy getting lost in the process.
The solution we proposed blew their socks off, and ours too: why not using carrier pigeons instead of digital or printed media? Pigeons were the perfect metaphor for this fast and gentle miracle molecule.
And a splash it was.
Put simply, a brand is a money-making machine, but only if all its components are assembled perfectly. From logo to promotion and everything in between, branding is one of my strongest suits. Below is the Trackable case study, the company I’m currently designing for and partnering with. Except for the technical writing, I did it all, including product concept.
Above: a technical video to explain a complex concept, made with Adobe Animate.
Above: this $0 budget quick little video for social media made vets chuckle.
The Design Thinking process relies on team work and iteration.
Below are some examples of design and campaign development.
I still remember the day when Ringo Starr walked into my office… (just kidding!), but EMI records did call me with a special assignment: they wanted me to promote their new Beatles Anthology launch. Although Anthology already had a branding kit built in the UK, I proposed that we rebranded it to meet the local and marketing needs, and they went with it.
I was so honored of being chosen to manage such an illustrious client that I hung the campaign poster in our conference room, for years! It still is my pride and joy.
