ORIGIN
I grew up in Colombia, surrounded by a landscape where nature was always present. Water, plants, mountains, color, and the rhythms of the natural world became part of how I learned to observe.
Long before I understood design as a profession, creativity was a way of paying attention. That relationship with nature has continued to shape how I see, question, and create.
Today, it remains at the foundation of my practice, not simply as visual inspiration, but as a way of thinking about connection, adaptation, and the systems we are part of.
Photo: Holding “The Meat Market” A grad school project that reimagined the human body as a catalog of commodities: eyes, lips, and skin cut out and priced; a visual protest against beauty culture and consumerism.
BECOMING A DESIGNER
My path into graphic design began through art.
I studied Studio Arts and Art History at Loyola Marymount University before earning my MFA in Graphic Design from Otis College of Art and Design. Moving between art, history, and design taught me to look beyond the surface of an image and consider the ideas, cultures, and relationships that give visual language meaning.
Over time, I became less interested in design as decoration and increasingly interested in what design can do: how it can tell stories, make knowledge accessible, create experiences, and shape relationships between people and the world around them.
DANCING ELEMENTS
The idea for Dancing Elements first appeared in a notebook in 2012 at a Typography Conference in San Francisco.
At the time, I did not know exactly what it would become. The practice continued to evolve through design, travel, observation, and experiences in different places.
A defining chapter of my development as a designer was working at Studio Dumbar in the Netherlands, where I was immersed in a different design culture and way of thinking about visual communication. Experiences in Bali, Colombia, and Los Angeles continued to expand the way I think about creativity, culture, nature, and community.
Dancing Elements gradually became more than the name of a design practice. It became a space for questioning what graphic design could be, and for developing a visual language shaped by curiosity, experimentation, research, and connection.
REGENERATIVE CREATIVITY
At the center of Dancing Elements is an ongoing exploration of regenerative creativity.
For me, regeneration asks us to think beyond making something new. It asks what our creative decisions participate in, what relationships they strengthen, and what they leave behind.
I am interested in how graphic design can learn from living systems, cultural knowledge, observation, and the natural world. Rather than treating nature simply as an aesthetic reference, I see it as a teacher and a reminder that everything exists through relationships.
This has led to a question that continues to guide my practice:
How can graphic design restore meaningful relationships between people, culture, and the living world?
I do not expect that question to have a single answer. Dancing Elements is where I continue exploring it.
THE PRACTICE TODAY
Today, I work across graphic design, visual narratives, drawing, research, and systems thinking.
My work can take different forms depending on the question at hand, from identities and visual systems to cultural and educational experiences, independent investigations, and experimental work.
Drawing has also become an increasingly important part of my practice. It allows me to observe before designing, explore relationships between forms, and develop visual ideas away from the screen.
Rather than being defined by one style or type of project, Dancing Elements is held together by a way of thinking: curiosity before certainty, observation before intervention, and an understanding of design as a relationship rather than simply an outcome.
I see Dancing Elements as a living practice.
It will continue to change as I change, responding to new questions, technologies, cultures, collaborations, and ways of understanding our relationship with the world.
What remains constant is the intention behind it:
To create work that leaves people, ideas, and the living world more connected than they were before.