Meet the Strategist: Sarina Montenegro transforms ideas into design
Think about an iconic brand. You can see a logo clearly in your mind; you know what it is instantly when you see a certain color combination; you can predict and expect how that company shows up in the world. The visual identity of a brand can speak volumes without saying a word. Colors evoke emotions. Icons connect ideas. Every detail, down to the font styles and sizes, ismeticulously designed by thoughtful brand strategists. This design system turns a brand strategy into an emotional, recognizable, and adaptable visual experience.
The best designers blend an artistic eye with a powerful understanding of a brand’s mission, values, and goals. It starts with listening.
Design starts with curiosity
Sarina Montenegro, S360’s Director of Creative Services, leads with curiosity first. Her goal from the outset is to understand the brand, who it connects with, and how it will operate in the real world.
To understand a brand, Sarina begins with an open mind. Before concepting a design, she says one of the most significant skills she uses in her work is active listening. She aims to deeply understand client needs and uncover underlying challenges and opportunities. She approaches her work as a partner and problem-solver, helping translate complexity into thoughtful, effective, creative solutions.
With a strong brand foundation and visual identity system, Sarina offers a full spectrum of creative services including website design, print, environmental design, and photo/video art direction. The possibilities with your brand are endless.
Trusting the process
An ideal project for Sarina is to build a brand from the ground up – defining visual identity systems and bringing them to life. This works best when there is alignment on goals, clarity in decision-making, and mutual respect for the process. Clients who engage collaboratively and are open to strategic thinking processes will gain the most out of their brand building partnership with Sarina and the S360 team. A brand project requires trust, open communication, and shared ownership of outcomes.
Even after a brand is developed, Sarina excels in stewarding the brand as it is applied in the real world. She explores impactful ways for a design system to work across marketing and advertising channels. When applying an existing brand identity into her design work, she maintains an openness to adapt. With new designs and campaigns, she ensures her work is consistent, recognizable, and strategically aligned with the brand.. She continually trusts the process of exploration and refinement to discover the optimal approach for telling a brand’s story.
Collaboration is creative
No brand is created without a team. At S360, we are fully collaborative with cross-functional teams of strategists, designers, and project managers. Sarina balances this collaboration with structured teams with autonomous leadership of projects from start to finish. She is adaptable in her approach based on the unique needs of each client and the team dynamics to help bring a project to life.
At every step in a brand process, Sarina balances hands-on design work with creative direction and team guidance. She applies ongoing client communication and feedback to refine design choices while leaning into her refined visual and aesthetic sensibility. Sarina can connect big-picture thinking with thoughtful, high-quality craft.
S360 as the client
Sarina is part of the collaborative team of designers who built the new visual language for S360. She applied that to full effect with S360’s new website. Under new ownership, we seized the opportunity to re-energize our brand and create a forward-looking identity for a newly unified company.
Designed to instill pride internally and support business development externally, Sarina applied her process to support S360’s new look and feel. She noted that deep collaboration and open communication during the creative process were key to developing the new website design. Sarina synthesized feedback and ideas across creative services, marketing, communications, and public affairs teams to design and refine the visual elements of S360’s brand.
Always a creative
Even in her off-hours, Sarina loves using her creativity for other pursuits. She enjoys cooking as a creative process—researching, experimenting, and refining recipes. And of course, the collaboration of a dinner party with friends. You may also find her playing pickleball to unwind and refocus her mental energy on the game. She also loves traveling and spending quality time with her family.
