adidas
hispanic heritage month activations / 2021

Graphic Designer · Art Director · Creative Director
Via Happylucky Agency

Some briefs are just a job. This one felt like a responsibility.

Adidas commissioned a series of activations across New York and Los Angeles to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month — not as a marketing exercise, but as a genuine investment in community. My role was to bring those moments to life visually, across nine events, wearing whatever hat the work required: graphic designer, art director, creative director, illustrator, set designer, production designer. Sometimes all of them on the same day.

recreo – amistad night

Amistad means friendship. The brief was to create event graphics that felt warm, communal, and authentically Latino without resorting to visual clichés. I designed posters, flyers, event signage, and DJ table graphics — building a visual language that felt celebratory and specific rather than generic and corporate.

uptown – domino night

Domino Night was mine from concept to execution. I designed every graphic element for the event — invitations, signage, digital assets, QR codes, and environmental graphics. The visual world needed to feel like a real neighborhood night, not a branded activation. The subtle Domino visuals were some of the most satisfying of the entire project.

Lily’s Skate Night

This is the one I'm most proud of.

The creative director trusted me with the full concept — the theme, the visual world, the entire look and feel of the event. I conceived an outdoor urban city park aesthetic: chain-link fences, neon lights, painted crates, plants, and a projector installation on the skate floor. The environment was designed to feel like a real LA neighborhood reclaimed for a night — not a corporate event dressed up in streetwear.

Translating that vision into life-size comps and production-ready mockups for the builders to execute was its own creative challenge — designing not just for the eye but for physical space. Seeing it come to life exactly as I'd imagined it was one of the more quietly thrilling moments of my career.

LA Street vendors – cart branding

Perhaps the most human part of the project.

Adidas provided brand new street food carts to Latino vendors in LA — and each cart needed its own visual identity. I worked directly with each vendor's story and visual aspirations to create custom branding that was authentic to them specifically. Not a template applied across the board. Each cart got its own personality — its own colors, its own character, its own treatment. Each one a small brand unto itself.

It was the kind of work that reminds you why design matters beyond the screen.

Working remotely on in-person events under tight budgets and fast-moving timelines required constant communication, meticulous time management, and the ability to make confident creative decisions without the luxury of being in the room. The team was majority Hispanic — which felt right, and rare, and worth noting.

A few months after the project wrapped, Adidas hired me directly as an independent contractor.

The project was ultimately cancelled due to internal company changes — but the offer alone said something about the quality of the work.