Sephora is a Global Beauty company, part of LVMH, with 1,900 stores in 29 states in the countries around the world. With North American headquarters in San Francisco. Events and quarterly announcements are a regular occurrence that require several collateral pieces, including environmental graphics, print pieces, presentation design and digital announcements.

Raising kids is not easy feat. It takes a village!

The development of this app grew out of a need from mom's lamenting the scheduling challenges that come from working and trying to make sure our kids are active, engaged, and developing the right skills.

Bluewolf is a global consulting firm. They produce an annual survey on how companies use the Salesforce platform, The State of Salesforce Annual Review.

For this year's report I wanted to position both Bluewolf, and The State of Salesforce, as a more mature, sophisticated and alternative option to what other consulting companies have to offer. The result was a new identity and brand, a global report, three additional Special Edition Reports (Financial Services, United Kingdom, and Australia). A website that would allow the ability to download the report, as well as the ability to benchmark your results against those of survey respondents.

Additionally each report needed social media advertising, Internal website banners and email templates.

What is the soul of a brand? What does it really stand for? For HUSTLER it’s soul wasn’t pornography, but freedom, and the unapologetic expression of that freedom. If HUSTLER was no longer a porn magazine, I saw it as an entity dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of the people guaranteed under the Constitution, by keeping the information flowing, by educating people on how to protest, and by providing legal counsel to those that work to protect our rights.

The deliverable for this project was to create a brand standard manual. But taking into account the brand and what it’s new purpose was, it seemed fitting to create additional items that represented the new purpose of HUSTLER. I created a protest kit that could be purchased at the new HUSTLER centers that included spray paint, stamps and stencils in a carry box.

To view the entire HUSTLER Brand Standard book, click here!

This project was an exploration of a typeface, with the deliverable of thirteen (13) cards containing information about the typeface, including it’s designer, it’s use, and in a vernacular of our choosing.

I selected rotis sans by Otl Aicher, and the vernacular of microbiology. I was inspired by the  idea of how scientist look through a microscope to dissect and understand the small component that make up the whole. That seemed like the perfect metaphor for the project and so I created the companion of a microscope, the slide to tell the story.

All images by Maite X. Figueroa

Create an imaginary film festival revolving around the
body of work  of a selected director. Identify the theme that revolves around the movies and create a cohesive system of materials, including tickets, catalog, DVD packaging and advertising. 

I chose the director Sam Mendes. Known for his breakthrough movie American Beauty, and his follow up successes Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go. Sam Mendes’ movies revolve around the realization that we are living a life based on the expectations of what success and happiness are, but that we instead are trapped by those expectations. We hide behind the trappings of relationship that are often challenged and broken, but look perfect to the outside world, and leave us feeling empty and hopeless. 

Too often in Hollywood movies it feels like life is falsely represented. Everybody is happy. Everybody’s problems get resolved. Maybe that is what is so refreshing about Sam Mendes and his movies. They are beautiful in their imagery and cinematography. And they are beautifully honest in their representation of real life; harsh, bitter, broken and not always happy.

Select a social organization and redesign their identity system to better communicate their mission and objective. To gain support, funding and increased awareness. 

I chose the social organization The Trevor Project. Their goal is to assist Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) teens who might feel isolated by their sexuality and offer them a hot line of suicide support. 

The solution was to create a logo that focused on the idea of connection through a telephone and the communication that can happen even when people aren’t face to face.

Designing for social change was an eye opening and soul rewarding experience. It was amazing to learn about all that young boys and girls face in the world, and knowing that design can play a role in turning things around for them was a very fulfilling role to have.

Paulie’s Pickling was a new venture begun by Paul Ashby & Liz Storm, and had a low budget to accomplish a large list of demands.

Initial solution was to create business cards that could also be used as hang tags for their series of products in their store front in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. In a few short weeks their product was in Whole Foods Markets and we needed to create product labels for their growing brand, and business. 

Paulie’s Pickling is a local small business that started from a dream
to make really good pickles. They were clear about what they were looking for in an identity, and what they could afford.

When designing the logo they were very clear that they wanted something that was green, red and yellow and had a fifties diner feel. The initial design was created to have a business card that would serve double duty as a product hang tag. But when Whole Foods  wanted to carry their products we had to come up with something more dedicated and permanent. The white labels were designed to stand out against the other pickles on the shelf with green labels. 

A collection of archetypes to help generate insights about how different people might relate to the research topic of Women in Leadership. Select ten (10) archetypes from a select list and through their eyes and voice create a dialog that answers the questions, “Do you feel women can be effective leaders?”

Creating a deck of cards that were 5x7 in dimension that describe and archetypal character and their point of view and frame of reference on the particular subject.

The topic of women in leadership seems like an old fashioned conver­­s­­ation that keeps on taking place. It is the reason why I chose the vernacular of old postcards to identify the archetypes and their tone of voice and comments. 

The dictionary defines and archetype as a typical example of a certain thing. In researching the topic of women in leadership identifying archetypes and their points of view is key in understanding the obstacle that prevent progress, the attitudes and social customs that are present and the best way to find a solution. The idea of having a variety of different points of view was key in understanding perspectives and gaining better knowledge of the topic.