Principal Role(s): Creative Director & Product Designer (with brand design and production)

Challenge: Creating a Dominican Republic–branded baseball cap that felt elevated, versatile, and wearable beyond niche settings.

Opportunity: Learn to design and manufacture a physical product from scratch while redefining what culturally-branded merchandise could look like.

Solution: Research showed most existing options were loud, low-quality, and context-specific. I approached the cap as a design object, prioritizing restraint, premium materials, and subtle cultural expression over overt branding.

Execution: I led the project end-to-end, from concept through manufacturing:

• Developed a distinctive, timeless logo through extensive iteration, ultimately trademarking a mark with the Dominican Republic silhouette embedded in the “R.”
  
• Selected premium materials, choosing wool over polyester for a more refined look and feel.
  
• Designed a custom cap silhouette, refining crown height, structure, and profile through repeated sampling.
  
• Oversaw logo digitization and embroidery, iterating on scale, density, and finish.
  
• Refined every detail- fit, texture, stitching, and proportion- through multiple production rounds.
  

Outcome: 

• The cap introduced a new category in the market: a Dominican-branded cap that is understated, high-quality, and wearable across contexts.
  
• This led to thousands of units sold, organic adoption by artists and athletes like Fernando Tatis Jr., and the foundation of a broader brand rooted in subtlety, cultural meaning, and everyday utility.