Irene Martins ©

Design lead 13+

I’m a Design Lead and designer, based in Amsterdam. Worked with Blijdorp Rotterdam Zoo, Woven Capital (Toyota) and MDL Fonds. With 13+ years between agency and in-house, I craft brands, products and campaigns by creating identities and systems that hold them together. Today, I’m also leading the people behind them.
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A conscious lifestyle, Kuali

Kuali aluminium water bottle held in both hands

Product's north star

For those who value health, practicality and sustainability, Kuali Water is a sustainable-driven bottled water brand from Mexico that reimagines everyday hydration as an eco-conscious lifestyle choice. The brand's core idea is simple: replace single-use plastic water bottles with refillable aluminum bottles, encouraging consumers to refill, reuse, and recycle while reducing plastic waste.

Beyond bottled water, Kuali is a brand with its heart on commitment to sustainability and social impact: it's a movement for environmental responsibility.

Kuali boxed bottle sitting in a bicycle basket

Brand philosophy

Founded in 2020 and by packaging purified water in aluminum containers (infinitely recyclable and designed for repeated use), Kuali aims to reduce the environmental damage caused by disposable plastic bottles. Beyond its packaging innovation, the company reinforces its environmental mission by donating 1% of its sales to environmental organizations (including initiatives focused on marine and wildlife conservation). This positions the brand not just as a beverage company, but as part of a broader movement toward responsible consumption and environmental stewardship.

Kuali bottle worn on the body with beaded necklaces

Impact

Kuali is no longer just a bottle on a shelf - it's a system hotels and restaurants are opting into. Every partnership feeds back into the brand's environmental commitment: each hotel or restaurant that joins sponsors the adoption of a whale through Kuali's conservation partners, turning a business decision into a certified act of environmental stewardship. What started as a reusable aluminum bottle is becoming infrastructure for how hospitality brands rethink hydration - one refill, one partner, one whale at a time.

Kuali packaging and bottle in a still-life scene

The foundation to scale, BUX 2022

BUX brand book spread

The scenario

BUX is Europe's fastest-growing neobroker. Since 2014, the Amsterdam fintech has been teaching new generations a simple lesson: investing isn't as hard as they were told. Almost a decade in, that lesson was being taught across 8 European countries. In 2023, BUX wasn't trying to disrupt the market anymore: it was setting up to lead it - and leadership starts with a foundation strong enough to scale. Nine years of fast growth had pulled the identity in directions of its own, into a brand that no longer read as one: the brand wasn't ready to scale.

BUX brand book spread
BUX brand book spread

The approach

The brand book wasn't a refresh, but the foundation BUX didn't have. We started with a full audit, examining every surface BUX showed up on across multiple markets, and the drift was specific: typography varied surface to surface, colours had loosened and the brand assets had stopped being recognisable. Against that, we built the first BUX brand book - covering positioning, tone of voice, key messages and visual identity. One source of truth, digital and print. We delivered a tightened system: a sharpened colour palette, a smaller set of typographic weights and sizes, and illustrations placed under rules of their own - kept in context, used the right way. A more mature BUX, a brand that re-earned its real trust. Not just a book - but the maturity and consistency BUX needed to scale.

BUX brand book detail
BUX brand book detail
BUX brand book spread

The impact

The brand book gave BUX what nine years of growth hadn't: one version of itself. Every market, every surface, every asset now speaks from the same source of truth - a system tight enough to move at the speed of the business instead of trailing behind it.

BUX brand book detail
BUX brand book detail
BUX brand book spread