Social Media

Web design

Branding

Graphic design

Social Media

Web design

Branding

Graphic design

Building a brand from scratch: naming, visual system, and digital product

Overview

Client: Cresta, an experience-based retreat currently in development in Lorsica, Genoa
Role: End-to-end brand design (naming, visual identity, UX, content, digital system)
Tools: Figma, Figma Sites, Figma Motion
Timeline: April — July 2026

Cresta is an end-to-end brand identity project for a trekking and food experience retreat in Lorsica, Italy. I led the process from naming through a launch-ready digital product: brand concept and naming (developed trilingually in Spanish, Italian, and English), logo and visual identity, a contextual color and typography system, brand content (menus, experience packages), UX for a full booking flow, and a website designed and prototyped in Figma, published on Figma Sites with native scroll animations.

The positioning: premium, but homemade. No luxury, no exclusivity. Care put into the detail of something simple.

Figma
Framer
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Claude & AI tools

Research

The moodboard went through several rounds of correction: early references leaned too editorial (glossy hands, plated fine-dining food), far from the "premium but homemade" feeling the brand needed. The final board settled into three threads that coexist: the physical (mountains, trails, worn boots), the social (long tables, cards, laughter), and the sensory (water, texture, hands), all in the same warm, unposed register.

Concept and naming

Cresta means the highest line of a mountain, the ridge between two slopes, where the climb ends and the view begins. The word works untranslated in Spanish, Italian, and English (crest), and ties mountain and sea together, since a crest can belong to either.

Cresta is where the climb ends and the view begins. A place in the Ligurian mountains where you climb, you enjoy, and you arrive at a long table. Care in what's simple: surrounded by nature, home-cooked food, people who don't need an introduction to sit down. Cresta isn't for someone looking to escape the world, it's for someone looking to meet others in it.

The tagline, "Every climb has its reward," carries a deliberate nod to a line from Mercedes Sosa, a cultural anchor placed on purpose, not an accident. It holds its tone across all three languages: "Toda subida tiene su recompensa" / "Ogni salita ha la sua ricompensa."

The logo

The mark went through a few directions before landing: a sneaker-silhouette icon that left out everything that wasn't trekking, a symmetrical mountain-peak triangle too close to existing outdoor-gear visual language, and a version with soft curves that unintentionally read as a seated meditating figure, a register with nothing to do with the brand.

The final version resolves all of that in one move: a triangle of three asymmetric peaks, unambiguous at a glance, topped with a solid dot marking the arrival at the ridge, built with the same stroke weight as the wordmark's letters, so the mark and the type read as a single piece.

Color:

Primary: cream (background) and charcoal black (type and logo)
Secondary: dark green, for contrast blocks
Accent: orange, used sparingly, never as a large surface
Contextual, by activity:
- Light blue = sea, Orange = trekking, Green = food.
  The full logo is used for trekking/mountain content; for food content, only the A with the dot, without the mountain: the mountain has already been climbed, now it's time to gather.

Typography:

Trueno for headlines and the wordmark, Metropolis for body copy, a serif reserved exclusively for the tagline, and Mebezt as a punctual accent for short, highlighted headlines.

Secondary icons:

A system of solid (filled, not outlined) icons drawn from the same geometric language as the mark, giving each brand pillar its own symbol (trail, wave) instead of forcing the mountain to represent everything.

Coach explaining something to an athlete

Social Media Post

An Instagram content system built as a brand narrative arc, not standalone posts, including real trekking and kayak data cards from the surrounding area.

Branding

Kitchen: a plant-based philosophy that isn't a banner to wave, it's simply how the kitchen runs here. Menus structured by experience and by day, with traditional Ligurian dishes reinterpreted in plant-based form.

Experiences: three multi-day packages (Mountain + Sea, Express, In the Mountains), each with a full itinerary, what's included and what isn't, and complete operational policy content (travel insurance, physical difficulty, cancellation, weather) treated as real product, not fine print.

Website

a full site designed in Figma and published on Figma Sites, with a 5-step booking flow designed as UX first (details, health questionnaire with a conditional branch, summary, insurance and waiver, payment).