Design Competencies · Brand Identity & Visual Storytelling

Brand systems for luxury, beauty, wellness, editorial, and social-impact innovation

Eighteen years building brand identity and editorial systems across luxury beauty, wellness, editorial publishing, and AI-driven social-impact ventures. Versatility in service of brand value — fluent across sectors and voices, committed to quality craft, sharp positioning, and visual systems that elevate the brand.

Focus Brand strategy, visual identity, editorial systems

Disciplines Logo systems, typography, color, brand guidelines, campaign design, material direction

Years 2005 – 2026

Skills

Strategy & positioning

Brand strategy Value proposition Personality framework Voice & tone Naming direction

Visual identity

Logo systems Typography hierarchies Color systems Photography & art direction Brand guidelines

Editorial & campaign

Editorial layout Campaign systems Illustration Print & digital production

Material & craft

Natural dye Textile Papermaking Pigment research Material direction

Soft skills Partnership, facilitation, and leadership habits — expand for the full list.

Client & founder partnership Cross-cultural collaboration Cross-functional collaboration Curiosity & learning agility Empathy & listening Executive partnership Facilitation & listening sessions Giving & receiving feedback Influence without authority Navigating ambiguity Ownership & accountability Stakeholder alignment Strategic communication Storytelling & narrative Systems thinking Vision & narrative alignment

Outcomes

A consistent record of brand systems that hold across formats, surfaces, and decades. Confident typography, clear visual systems, and material restraint as the through line.

26 Brands standardized at The Estée Lauder Companies

10,000+ Editorial assets designed at Condé Nast

0 → 1 Brand systems for Launch Catalyst, Wonderpath, and selected studio clients

Approach

I build brand systems that are confident, material, and built to scale. Each brand starts with positioning and personality, then moves to a clear visual system, and ends with the practical templates a team can use to publish and grow. My background in editorial publishing and luxury portfolios gives the work a sense of restraint and detail. My studio practice in natural dye and textile gives it a material foundation.

"Strategy decides what a brand has to say. Identity decides how it feels. The work is keeping the two in sync."

Featured case · Launch Catalyst — brand system for a skills intelligence platform

Year: 2026
Scope: Brand strategy, logo system, typography, color, brand personality framework
Output: Parent brand and Skills Passport product logos. Typography hierarchy across Outfit, Source Serif 4, DM Sans, and JetBrains Mono. Bold magenta and black palette with vivid accents. Brand personality compass to align voice across product surfaces.

A six-week 0→1 engagement defining brand mission, positioning, and a full visual system. The brand reads as human, slightly playful, guiding, and powered by deep systems. Built to scale across product, marketing, and partner surfaces.

Brand positioning — narrative, audience, and value translated into a single reference board.

Personality compass — tone of voice and character anchored to the audience the brand serves.

Design principles — six guardrails that keep every visual decision consistent with the brand strategy.

Logo system — primary mark, lockups, and Skills Passport sub-brand expression.

Typography system — pairing, hierarchy, and rhythm for product and editorial moments.

Launch Catalyst — Typography in application

Typography in application — showing how the system breathes across scale and use.

Color application — palette decisions translated into a working visual language.

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Featured case · Luxury beauty and editorial — Estée Lauder, Clinique, Condé Nast

Years: 2005 – 2012
Scope: Visual identity standardization, editorial design, illustration, print and digital systems
Output: Standardized brand and media delivery across Estée Lauder's 26-brand global portfolio. Editorial features and original illustration for Clinique campaigns including Fresh Bloom and Sensitive Issues. Editorial visual systems for Condé Nast publications, managing 10,000+ assets.

The foundation of my visual eye. Working inside luxury beauty taught me restraint, hierarchy, and how a brand sustains itself across thousands of touchpoints. Editorial work taught me pace, narrative, and the relationship between image and word.

A range of editorial, campaign, web, and print work — translating each client's distinct voice across luxury beauty (Estée Lauder Companies, Clinique, Jo Malone, Origins), gallery (Cristina Grajales), and digital and lifestyle brands.

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Featured case · NYC luxury design — galleries, lighting, decorative arts

Years: Various
Scope: Logo systems, promotional print, catalog design, editorial
Output: Identity and promotional materials for Cristina Grajales Inc., Christophe Côme, Lighting Masters, Susman Canter Collection, and others. Supporting commercial brand systems for Amgen, GHD, and selected pharma and professional services clients.

Range across a single sector. Austere typographic marks for galleries. Bold geometric identity for a lighting studio. Quiet, refined editorial for decorative arts. The work shows a willingness to match each client's voice rather than impose a single house style.

Logos — selected marks across client engagements.

Brand systems — Amgen branding framework.

Brand systems — GHD branding system.

Brand systems — portal optimization, system applied at product scale.

Brand systems — Brodalumab media matrix, system extended across channels.

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Working on a brand project? Let's talk.

Launching a brand from zero, refreshing one that has drifted, or building an editorial system that needs to hold across surfaces — I'd love to hear about it.

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Research as the compass, design as the map

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