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Selva Stationery,  | International Design Awards Winners
Selva Stationery,  | International Design Awards Winners

Selva Stationery

Lead Designers
Bio

Stripes, converging circles, colors, textures, and squiggly designs intoxicate Rafael Holguin. His motto is, ?Design is a spirit that lives in everything.? We have the benefit of learning from Rafael?s extensive design experience every day at Palio.

To Rafael, it?s not about making the logo big enough. It?s about making sure the thinking is big enough. With his quiet and reflective way, Rafael leads a talented and disciplined group of graphic designers to bring out the soul of a brand.

He leads Palio?s Design Lab, a hub of intense creative thought that supports the agency?s focus on great work?this is where the visual language of a client?s brand finds its voice. It?s where the soul lives on.

Rafael?s expertise is creative direction for brand and identity design solutions. He also excels at concept development and execution, production management and oversight, and business development. His approach to problem-solving is thinking and communicating simply and logically. Hard work for him involves submerging himself in information and having a visual and verbal debate before anything is committed to paper.

Rafael believes that great graphic design work comes from deeply understanding the objective, knowing human historical behavior and psychographics, and from a well-defined need being rightly met. By understanding the audience, Rafael does not simply try to please and give them the expected solution. He challenges them to complete the picture and peak their curiosity. He puts himself in the place of the consumer and asks what would provoke him or get under his skin, what stops him, and pleases his senses. Everything that is designed should trigger a real emotional response.

Rafael defines edgy as provocative. Work can be edgy in terms of content, style, or both. When faced with the challenge of getting edgier concepts through to execution Rafael knows that to do great work, you need great clients, and a client/agency relationship that is built upon trust. To him, the challenge is twofold: getting the client to trust our brand expertise, and being able to protect the integrity of the solution so optimum results can actually be achieved in every manifestation of the brand.

And he (and his team) have done just that with the following award-winning brands: a2Milk, Pristine Clean, Kigali, Fentora, bFocused, Adiana, Archmedia Solutions Group, Reach, Ostiva, Amrix, Selva, Adheris, MMFC, Wordclay, and, Palio.

Prior to joining Palio, Rafael was vice president/design director at Y Brand/GSWNY. In this position, he oversaw brand identity development for numerous clients, including Eli Lilly, Merck, Cephalon, Baxter and TAP. Before this, he was principal/creative director at Arismendi. As a project director/senior designer at FutureBrand, Rafael created and implemented branding design solutions and communications tools for key clients. Rafael served as art director and assistant art director at Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing, and art director and designer at Procter & Gamble.