Welcome to Cardenas Design Group. 🏴 The design partner for disruptors. cardenasdesigngroup.com

Rebrand Website for one of the most interesting sports I’ve come across. ♟️🥊 Meet United Chessboxing, the brand and team spearheading a sport that fuses the brains of chess with the brawn of boxing, led by the first American world champion, Matt Thomas. The rules are simple: alternate between rounds of chess and boxing until someone wins by checkmate or knockout. The Rise of Chessboxing Born from a French comic by Enki Bilal, the sport became reality in 2003 when artist Iepe Rubingh hosted the first event in Berlin. It quickly spread across Europe and Asia before finding new life in the U.S. through pioneers like Kevin Vaugh-Carber and Matt “Matador” Thomas. Since then, the sport has grown globally, from the Mogul Chessboxing Championship to an exhibition at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. I actually met Matt at Bonnaroo this year, and after nerding out over Old School RuneScape and our shared chess-filled childhoods, he told me the team was preparing for the World Championship in Serbia where they would compete against 50 other countries and 300 competitors. Once I heard that, I knew I wanted to help and the goals became clear: Build an identity that helped United Chessboxing continue leading the sport while paying homage to both chess and boxing, and ensure Team USA went into the World Championship with an identity that matched their strength and spirit. 🎯 My favorite highlight? The Logo. It’s simple and direct, showing the force of boxing through a fist within the body of a chess piece. Even if you don’t know the sport yet, you can instantly see the fusion of both disciplines in the mark. The team had so much fun with this one because the industry/sport is just soooo unique. And how did United/Team USA do at Worlds? 🥇 4x Golds 🥈 3x Silvers 🥉 2x Bronzes 🏆 2nd Overall And to top it off, ESPN’s 60 Minutes aired a full segment last Sunday on the sport, the team, and their journey to Worlds. Fun fact: I played competitive chess from like 5 years old to 15, so not only did I have a personal mission to make this SICK. That background helped us design subtle brand details that only chess players would catch, like how the arrow assets across the website reflect the movement patterns of specific chess pieces. 🤌 To learn more about this fascinating sport: unitedchessboxing.com/

I’ve spent 11 years learning that design isn’t about what you see, it’s about what you feel. Tbh anyone can make something look good, but that's the ticket to play, not to win. Great design isn’t measured by style. It’s measured by how successfully it inspires a feeling and turns it into action. ✅ Every shape, space, and texture you create builds emotion. Curiosity. Confidence. Trust. Desire. Belonging. When done right, design becomes something you feel before you even realize you’ve seen it. That’s why I like to say the best designers aren’t artists. We’re translators. Clients come to us with visions they’ve been dreaming about for years or even decades. Ideas they’ve nurtured, protected, refined, and built their identity around. And then they hand them to us. For me, that moment, that handoff, is sacred. 🤝 We take something invisible, a fragmented idea or belief or mission, and make it not only seen and felt by their audience, but guides them to the specific outcome aligned with the brand’s goals. If I had to summarize this 11-year lesson into one sentence: Good design looks good, but great design feels good. It’s where intuition, empathy, and craft all meet in the middle. ⚔️ …and yes, it also helps to work with designers who absolutely cook:)

If you were wondering how I hype up my team’s work. 😂 This clip is from the Founders Forum vlog I posted Friday, and one thing I’m trying to be very intentional about in my content is GASSING my team up. Before branching off on my own, I spent the first decade of my design career working at various agencies, startups, and unicorns. The one universal truth I learned was that nothing lights up a designer (or any creative) like genuine appreciation and recognition. 🔦 But it has to be earned. Recognition loses its magic when it’s handed out for everything. From experience, that kind of love (oxygen to the flame) invites creatives to fall deeper in love with their craft and more frequently enter a state of play when they create. 🎨 The result? Creatives pouring that love back into the work itself, dramatically increasing the quality of deliverables. At the end of the day, I’m just building the fun environment and culture I wish I had as a designer at previous orgs. Taking pages from the good, ignoring tf out of the bad. 🤝 I still remember the few times I truly felt appreciated as a designer, and how much more fun I had with my teammates/managers because of it. (vs the product managers taking credit for themselves) Btw, EW = NASTY WORK = GOOD 👨‍🍳

Last week, I challenged myself to document/vlog my trip to NYC for FC's Founders Forum. (knowing how interesting my NY work trips can get) I won't lie, holding out a camera and talking to it was a bit uncomfortable at first, but I quickly got into my groove when I decided to show up to the camera authentically, rather than trying to put up a persona for it. My ultimate goal: Just have fun with it... So here it is, an hour-long compilation of peak NYC moments and sidequests, both in my professional and personal life. 🤝 All feedback is welcome! 🖤 youtu.be/CyFLx2ugrdk

Stripe got a new logo 👀 What do we think? I honestly kinda love it: - The S was a bit lifeless, didn't really tell a story - The new mark is quite literally a stripe, and although it's simple, it ties back to a bigger portion of their identity, being that it is the dot in the "i" in the full wordmark - A stripe fits well for their name, subject matter, and overall aesthetic - This choice follows something I've always believed in: Logos shouldn't have to explain everything your business does or is. I love brands that intentionally use their logo/mark as a simpler northern star that points towards an overarching brand identity that tells the fuller story (a piece of a bigger cohesive puzzle) I also did notice the purple is just slightly more saturated now (love it). 🤌 Sure, are they're doing the thing where brands are going simpler with their branding? Yes. Do I think it works for them though? Yes:)

Founders Forum by @FoundersClubUS was an absolute success! 🔥 The feeling of seeing our design work live in person will never EVER fade. But what made this cooler was getting to truly see how impactful a community @thechrismeade and @AaronSpivak2 are building. I'm sure those who were there would agree, but you could just feel the sense of community, the sense of belonging, the intention, the resonance from peer to peer. A lot of the folks there had been waiting a long time for those feelings in their founder journeys. And just seeing the live and FLOURISHING embodiment of FC's mission statement (that we literally typed into the brand guidelines day 1) is so surreal. Like, imagine someone comes to you with a vision for their life-long dream/brand, and a year later, you see it come to life exactly or even better than they envisioned it... Moments/weekends like that are what have kept me designing over the last decade. 🤌 To add to that: - got to chop it up with past, present, and future clients - got to sponsor an event for the first time (which was so cool and trippy seeing our logo on print collateral all over the venue) - strengthened relationships with partners - learned a ton from the incredible panelists - straight up partied in a sauna?? @othership_us - squadded up with the team/homies to see our lord and savior, John Summit - embarked on a feral amount of nyc sidequests (basically double xp weekend) - had incredible laughs and reflections with old friends You really just can't beat that, and it's the reason I'm going to be more intentional at attending more. One, to make sure the print collateral came out as good as it did in Figma:) But most importantly, to see and feel with my own eyes how impactful our work could be. 🤝 (and seeing who it's really for just improves the work so so much) So so proud of the CDG team for absolutely HAMMERING the event branding and collateral the last 3 months!! 🎯 Kinda vlogged the whole week too. I'll be posting that over the next few days, following a deep dive walkthrough of the Founders Club Branding. 🎥

Now accepting a new form of payment at CDG 💅 (i actually wish one of yall would lob your gamertag id smoke you dry on rust)

A gorgeous, dark design studio website by @Diverge – CDG's new portfolio site is stunning, doing a fantastic job of getting across their level of skill and attention to detail. The 'we build what can’t be ignored' scroll interaction is a particular highlight: lovely stuff.

Couldnt have been part of a better team. Every single one of them are so good at their craft and I learn so much from all of them all them time. 🔥🚀

BIG day for all of us who have been working in the shadows with some of the most savage designers I have ever had the pleasure of working with! x.com/Diverge/status/1965812…

Howdy:) After 11 years of designing, I’m finally launching my first website/portfolio this week. Over the past two years, what began as a 1-man operation has grown into a 15-person team of savages, entirely through word-of-mouth business. That kind of demand, for a service that could only be found by discovering the work itself in the wild, made me realize we’re building and offering something truly special. Not only will this site serve as the new home to some of our most beautiful work, but it will also mark the start of my content journey, where I’ll begin documenting the magic of this team, the potency of our work, and the path to our first award together. If we’ve been able to do what we’ve done without the spotlight, I’m curious to see what happens when we finally step into it. 🏴

Today marks the most surreal milestone of my life: @socialsnowball has officially been acquired by @dotdigital (LON: DOTD), and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement. I originally started this business out of my own frustration: As an ecommerce brand, there weren’t any good platforms for partnering with creators and customers as affiliates. I decided I was going to change that. Over the past 5 years, what started as a simple post-purchase referral widget has turned into the leading creator and affiliate management platform for Shopify brands. What started as a sketch on a piece of notebook paper is now trusted by over 2,500 leading brands like True Classic and G FUEL. What started as a 20 year old kid's idea has forever changed the way ecommerce brands approach influencer marketing. Over the years we have accomplished so many incredible things that I am deeply proud of: - Created the first influencer-affiliate platform for Shopify brands - Invented the concept of Safelinks, which is now a standard feature in every major influencer platform - Built a full time team of 25 incredible people - Were the first influencer platform ever to integrate with TikTok Shop - Built an amazing IRL community of influencer marketers - Created a high production video course academy to teach influencer marketing strategy to the world - Partnered with hundreds of amazing agencies - Spoke on stage at countless events all over the world But what I am the most proud of, is the fact that we did all of this while bootstrapping and remaining profitable. In the early days, we were rejected by every VC we spoke to. Instead of giving up, we powered through and figured out how to make it work without taking on funding. In hindsight, this was the best thing that could have ever happened to the business. Now, we are partnering with DotDigital to take things to the next level. To our customers, partners, affiliates, and the entire DTC community: expect to see a lot more of Social Snowball. This acquisition is enabling us to move at a significantly faster speed than was ever possible, and we have an insane roadmap that I can't want to share more on soon. I will still be leading the ship, but now I have more firepower to work with than ever before. To the Social Snowball team, I have so much gratitude for all of you. Thank you for believing in me, and thank you for taking a bet on Social Snowball. What we have accomplished is genuinely insane, borderline impossible, and you all should be truly proud of yourselves. And of course, thank you to Milan and the entire DotDigital team for believing in what we have built. It has been such a pleasure to work with you guys over the past few months. Here's to the next chapter. Full press release linked in the replies. 👇

Over the last 18 months we got to help Reactiv with their Branding, Product Design, Website and everything in between. This week they come out of stealth with a $5M seed round and I couldn't be prouder to see it all come to life. Full breakdown thread coming soon! 💎

Super proud of how this site turned out yet it's only a sneak peak. Excited to showcase the full rollout very soon. Congrats boys. 🥂

I've gotten DMs left and right about who created my site (boletingrowth dot com) and would be remiss if I didn't give @Diverge and his team a hats off publicly. 🔥 the only thing I would say about his work is that it's worth every. single. penny.

Will be in NYC 5th-13th! I know I've worked with a ton of NY peeps in the last couple of years so if you're around I'd love to grab some lunch or raid your office. 👨‍🍳