Cardenes Market
Rebranding, marketing strategy, and full visual identity for one of the oldest family-owned bodegas in Lawrence, MA.
My Role
Marketing Manager & Lead Designer
Owned the full visual identity, rebranding, marketing strategy, social media presence, print collateral, and digital storefront across a five-year engagement.
Timeline & Context
2018–2023 · 5 years
Concurrent with my B.A. in Graphic Design & CS minor
Real family-owned client
Toolkit
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Figma
The Context
Cardenes Market is a family-owned Latin American bodega that has served the Lawrence, MA community for decades — a true neighborhood barrio bodega. I stepped in as marketing manager to modernize the brand for the next generation: a cohesive visual identity, a real social media presence, and a marketing strategy that honored the store's history while making it recognizable to a younger, digitally-native community.
This is where I learned the craft — brand systems, marketing, and running a real business's full visual presence, all while completing my undergraduate degree.
New look. Stronger brand. Same family.
A strategic rebrand and bold visual identity system designed to set Cardenes Market apart in a crowded local landscape — without losing what made it feel like home.
1.0 Primary Logo — modernized while keeping the family feel.
1.1 Secondary brand mark for tighter applications.
1.2 Core promotional animation — the marketing hook that ran across every channel.
Connecting with customers online.
The bodega experience is warm, loud, and personal. I captured that in dynamic, engaging social content that pulled the physical store's energy into a digital space.
1.3 Social media motion graphic.
1.4 Dynamic social content across the feed.
1.6 Instagram Grid Layout: A curated 9-tile system that reinforced the brand rhythm.
A cohesive brand across every touchpoint.
The rebrand translated across every asset: logos, colors, patterns, typography, photography direction, stationery, and packaging. The goal was one unified system where every touchpoint — from a receipt to a delivery van — read as one brand.
2.0 Brand color palette.
2.1 Brand patterns and sticker system.
2.2 Typography system: Hierarchy for signage, packaging, and digital.
2.3 Photography direction: Warm, honest, family-centered.
2.4 Brand stationery.
Product mockups & in-store applications.
Applying the new identity to physical packaging, retail materials, and the store's delivery fleet — turning the rebrand into something customers could hold, carry, and see driving down the street.
2.5 Retail shopping baskets.
2.6 Retail bag mockup.
2.7 Takeout packaging for the store kitchen.
2.8 Fleet Transportation Wrap — the brand rolling through the neighborhood.
Family is the product.
A bodega isn't a chain — it's the owner. I built the marketing strategy around that: an authentic connection between the customers and the man behind the counter. Every campaign, every social post, every ad leaned into the family-owned story instead of hiding it.
3.0 Store Owner Illustration — the character voice that anchored the brand.
3.1 The Real Store Owner: The person the illustration was drawn from.
3.2 Core brand message.
Social media posts.
Highlighting store products, weekly specials, and community moments through vibrant social content designed to feel native to the platform, not like a paid ad.
3.4 Post one.
3.5 Post two.
3.6 Post three.
3.7 Post four.
3.8 Kitchen promotional poster.
Bringing the storefront online.
The final layer: translating the physical bodega into an accessible, modern digital storefront that respected the brand system and served the same community online.
4.0 Digital storefront implementation.
4.1 Target Persona: The customer the site was built for.
Five years of ownership, real community impact.
Cardenes Market is where I first learned to run the full visual and marketing presence of a real business: not as an intern, not as a class project, but as a marketing manager with actual accountability to a family owner and their community.
- Full brand system: Logo suite, color palette, typography, patterns, photography direction, and stationery: a cohesive identity applied across every physical and digital touchpoint.
- Real social presence: Built and ran the store's social media from scratch, growing it into an active channel that connected the bodega with a younger, digitally-native slice of the Lawrence community.
- Community recognition: The rebrand drew notice from other small business owners in Lawrence, who reached out for design help—the first quiet signal that this could become its own business (and eventually did: AM Digital Designs).
What this project shows
Five years of sustained ownership over a real client's brand, marketing, and digital presence — built while earning my undergraduate degree. This is where my design career started: with an actual business, an actual community, and an actual owner counting on me to get it right.
Skills Applied