Curriculum Vitae
Santiago
Valencia Vera
Brand systems, wayfinding, retail. And the software that runs them.
Designer with twenty years across identity, wayfinding, and retail experience, now building the internal software behind them. I read unfamiliar operations quickly and find where they actually break, usually several steps behind the deliverable I was asked for. Asked to design garment labels, I traced the failure to unstructured data and undocumented standards, then built the system that generates them: about thirty minutes per label down to about one, six daily users, three departments aligned on a standard I wrote without authority over any of them. Currently Chief of Consumer Experience at Distrihogar, shipping production systems in TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres, n8n, and LLM pipelines.
Based in
New York, USA / Medellín, Colombia
Practicing since
2005
Languages
Spanish · English (B2)
Experience
2023–Present
Chief of Consumer Experience
Distrihogar · Medellín, Colombia
- Garment label system: rebuilt the data and standards behind the artwork. About thirty minutes per label down to about one, six daily users, three departments on a written standard.
- Internal software the team runs on: launch planning, headless publishing, catalog image production, product information management.
- Centro de Experiencias: a small-format store built as an experiment. It matched the sales of larger traditional stores with less floor space, and recovered customers who never migrated to e-commerce.
2013–2023
Senior Art Director
Independent practice & studio engagements · Medellín, Colombia
- Wayfinding for Ruta N Medellín, Dream Plaza Panama, Viva Centros Comerciales.
- Brand strategy and corporate identity work for institutional clients.
2005–2013
Wayfinding lead
Universidad de Antioquia · Medellín, Colombia
- Single visual identity system adapted to four building typologies.
- Edificio de Extensión, Posgrados, IPS León XIII, Sede Oriente.
- Designed governance that scaled to future buildings without author intervention.
Selected work
- Garment label generation system at Distrihogar. A backlog of several hundred labels replaced in a single export.
- Ruta N Medellín wayfinding. One system across a 65,000 m² innovation district.
- IPS León XIII bilingual clinical signage. 29 rooms, 87 patient-care signs.
- Sede Oriente botanical wayfinding. Yarumo, Roble, Nogal, Chagualo, Caunce, Candelo.
Disciplines
- Brand strategy
- Wayfinding systems
- Phygital retail
- Corporate identity
- Art direction
- Consumer experience
- Internal software
- Data standards
Stack
TypeScript · Next.js · Postgres · n8n · LLM pipelines
Education
BFA
Graphic Design
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana