Papi

A soda rooted in Puerto Rican identity

Papi is a probiotic soda brand built from the ground up across multiple school courses, anchored in Puerto Rican food culture. The category descriptor is "cultura soda" — not a heritage brand performing nostalgia, but a contemporary product that wears its roots without apologizing for them or over-explaining them.

The project grew from a single-course branding exercise into a full environmental design concept, eventually centering on a piragua cart pop-up activation at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle.

Five flavors, one system

Each of the five SKUs — Piña Colada, Tamarind Citrus, Bilí, Parcha-Ginger, and Guayaba — has a distinct color world within a consistent structural system. The label design is bold enough to read from distance on a cart or cooler, personal enough to hold up to close inspection.

The flavor names are left in Spanish, without translation. That's a brand decision, not a packaging constraint. Papi doesn't code-switch for a broader market; it trusts its audience to meet it where it is.

The piragua cart as brand anchor

The pop-up activation concept centers on a custom piragua cart at Golden Gardens, Seattle: the piragua (Puerto Rican shaved ice) as the physical expression of the brand, the park as the community context that makes the cultural specificity feel generous rather than exclusive.

The environmental design system covers the cart itself, signage, takeaway packaging, and merchandise. Everything is built around the idea that the cart is a destination, not a vendor.

The most personal project in the portfolio

Papi is where my background and my design practice intersect most directly. Puerto Rican identity, hospitality instincts, the attention to how a brand lives in a physical space, the conviction that specificity is a strength rather than a limitation. It's the work I'm most invested in and probably the clearest expression of how I think about what design is actually for.