2018 — 2019 · Digital Graphic Designer
LFI
From a temporary cover to designing for Chile's biggest brands
My first design studio. For just over a year I designed digital, brand, and print pieces for more than ten brands across banking, government, education, healthcare, energy, and retail. Among them: Scotiabank, Walmart Chile, Clínica Alemana, and Marca Chile. The biggest assignment: close to 90% of the signage and print material for the Scotiabank Tower.
- Company
- LFI Digital Agency
- Clients
- 10+ brands
- Projects
- Up to 10 projects at once
- Platform
- Digital · Print · Wayfinding
- Disciplines
- Adobe Creative Suite · 2D/3D animation · Motion graphics · Video production · HTML & CSS
Context
My first design studio
LFI Digital Agency was my first design studio. I came in to cover a temporary leave and, before long, the quality of the work turned that cover into a permanent role. An agency works differently from a product: instead of a single platform you go deeper into over years, it is many brands at once, each with its own identity, constraints, and deadlines. That is where I learned to design with rigor and speed at the same time, and where my craft expanded well beyond graphic design.
The roster
Ten brands, seven sectors
In just over a year, I worked across a client roster you rarely see together: banking, government —including an international client—, education, healthcare, energy, retail, and wine. Each logo was a different brand system to learn and respect.
The challenge
Three fronts of agency work
Many brands, one standard
An agency designs for many clients at once, each with its own brand system, rules, and deadlines. The challenge was not one piece: it was holding the same level of quality while jumping from one identity to another, several times a day.
From the screen to the building
The work ranged from digital design — social, mailing, websites — to print and physical signage. Each format has its own production rules: what works on a screen does not work in a printed piece or in the signage of a tower.
Clients who do not forgive mistakes
Banks, government, and large corporations arrive with strict brand manuals and zero tolerance for inconsistency. Designing for them meant respecting someone else's system to the letter, without losing your own judgment.
Discovery
Understanding the brand before touching it
Every new client started the same way: understanding their brand system in depth. Manuals, past pieces, tone, constraints. Before designing a single piece for a bank, a university, or a winery, you had to internalize how that brand looked and how it sounded — because agency work is judged, above all, by how invisible the designer's hand is behind the client's brand.
Decisions
Three decisions that shaped how I work
Systems, not one-off pieces
For each client I built reusable visual modules — templates, components, application rules — instead of designing every piece from scratch. Producing faster without losing consistency. It was, without knowing the name yet, my first instinct for design systems.
Signage is experience too
Designing the signage of a corporate tower is designing how hundreds of people find their way through a building every day. I approached it with the same rigor as an interface: clear hierarchy, consistency, and zero ambiguity. Wayfinding before I knew it was called that.
Crossing into code
At LFI I had my first real contact with HTML and CSS, building pieces for the web. It was the first bridge between design and engineering, and the seed of the designer-and-developer profile I built afterward.
Signature client
Scotiabank
Scotiabank was the largest client I worked with at LFI, and the timing was unusual: the acquisition of BBVA Chile. My main focus was internal communication and email — the stream of pieces that keeps an organization of thousands informed and aligned while it is growing and transforming.
That acquisition brought a brand transition: a new logo, a new color palette, and the arrival of Scotiabank Azul, the brand used to integrate the BBVA operations. Guidelines came from headquarters in Canada, and part of the work was translating those global rules into local pieces without losing consistency.
of the signage and printed material for the Scotiabank Tower, its corporate headquarters, came from my desk.
Moving from an email piece to the signage of an entire building means changing discipline without changing client: from the detail of a template to how hundreds of people orient themselves every day inside a tower.
Execution
What I produced, channel by channel
Multichannel digital design
For the client roster I designed pieces for social media, email marketing campaigns, and websites. The constant flow of communication a brand needs to sustain its presence.
Corporate internal communication
A good part of the work was internal communication: the pieces that keep a large organization informed and aligned behind closed doors, a recurring assignment especially for Scotiabank.
From pixel to paper
The work crossed into the physical world often: signage, print material, and event pieces. Each format with its own production rules, its own scale, and its own margin for error.
Branding for seven sectors
I produced brand material for clients in banking, government, education, healthcare, energy, retail, and wine — each with its own visual system, tone, and constraints.
Animation, 3D, and video production
The work did not stay static. Image editing, vector illustration, 2D and 3D animation, motion graphics, and video production: LFI was a foundation of visual craft much broader than traditional graphic design.
Results
The impact of the work
10+
Brands served across banking, government, healthcare, retail, energy, education, and wine
90%
Of the signage and print material for the Scotiabank Tower
Pixel → building
Digital, print, and signage design in one role
HTML/CSS
The first bridge between design and engineering
Takeaways
What I took forward
- 01
Agency work taught me to design fast without speed running over quality. It is the only way to carry ten brands at once.
- 02
Designing inside someone else's brand systems teaches a useful humility: the best agency work is the kind you do not notice, because it lets the client's brand shine.
- 03
A building's signage and an interface solve the same underlying problem: helping a person know, without thinking, where to go. It was product design before I knew to call it that.
- 04
At LFI I wrote my first HTML and my first CSS. I did not know it then, but that was the first step of the path that led me to be a developer as well as a designer.
On to the next project?