AboutLos Angeles
Creative and art director in Los Angeles, shaping packaging and campaigns for brands from Vita Coco to Fenty Beauty. Now building Flipside Galleries, and writing guides to places I love.
How I Work
I lead with simplicity, clear communication, and a lot of trust. I set clear goals and get out of the way. Autonomy is how people grow into strong leaders, not just how projects get shipped. I'm most energized by breaking big, ambiguous ideas into work people can actually pick up, and by partnering across functions to keep momentum.
Mentorship is where I take the most pride. Julia's first job was as a junior designer reporting to me at Vita Coco. She's since led creative at Ugly Drinks, Mars, and Sabra. Rhea became a senior packaging designer at Sir Kensington's, Daniela is at Ruggable, Jared is at Webflow, and Erik became a design leader in his own right. Ed and Staci worked with me at Vita Coco, then again on my team at Scale Media. Great to have a second go-around!
"Valentina was one of my favorite directors to work under. She spear-headed a much better structure on our day-to-day, and always had a 'can-do' attitude — especially under last-minute projects or when we were under-resourced."
Jared Bañares · Visual Designer · reported to her directly
What I Value
I take bold creative risks and treat failure as information. That's how I find angles other people miss. I build spaces where collaboration actually works: listening first, giving people credit, remembering that the people behind the brand are the point. I care about what a brand or a project leaves behind. I'm moved by cultural footprint and legacy.
The Long Way Here
(or, somehow,
my own flipside)
In parallel to brand decks and packaging, there was a thesis on Venezuela's Museum of Contemporary Art, an art history degree after it, and MoMA and Sotheby's courses on how collections get built. I've always wanted to understand art from every side of the room, so I took every job that would show me one: screen-printing my own t-shirt line at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, handling paintings at Acquavella Galleries, building printed guides for Scope Art Fair.
Then came the better part of a decade on the ground with Frieze — first in New York, then in Los Angeles, when the art fair followed me West — and seasons spent making big sales of large-scale sculptures at a gallery in Napa. In between: set design with Rob Eggers, figure drawing, setting up a new home for Annie Leibovitz, and a 100-day creative project almost every year for a decade. Always curiously learning and making.
Souvenirs
Drag or scroll →
Midnight
Some of my favourite work never sat on a shelf. On Midnight I was the art director: responsible for everything the camera sees and nobody notices. The palette, the props, the rooms, the wear on things. Get it right and the world disappears into the story. It's the same instinct I bring to brands. Build the world first, and people step inside.
Still Making
Outside client work, I paint in oils and oil pastels. I'm currently exploring wood panels and building toward an MFA. I write self-guided art and architecture walking tours (Los Feliz and Bunker Hill so far, with more places on the way), and a guide to the Venezuelan artists I collect and love, several of them close friends. I also write about craft, leadership, and making things on Medium, including an annual Year in Review.
From the studio
Next chapter
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