L
Lola Quiñones
— product designer™
work
process
play
★ taking work — Q1 '27
based in CDMX 📍
8 yrs of pixels
Lola.
Quiñones.
since
2018
Senior Product Designer who draws first, prototypes second, and argues with the engineers third.
I make identity-driven product systems for companies that refuse to look like every other Stripe-clone in the App Store. Currently designing the consumer experience at Membrana. Previously: Pluma Bank, Sebo Records, Florería Studio. I work in colour, I trust the body of work over the deck, and I always print the moodboard.
✿
yes, that's me
47
PRODUCTS DESIGNED
12
DESIGN SYSTEMS
9
AWARDS & FEATURES
∞
POSTERS, IN SECRET
01
MANIFESTO (ABRIDGED)
I don't design products. I design the feeling you get from products.
The product is the proof. Mood is the brief. Pixels are the receipt of taste. Most products fail not because the engineering is bad, but because nobody on the team would put them in their phone home screen. I design for that moment — the one where someone shows their friend something I made and says "look at this."
★ rules I keep breaking ↓
01.
If three people on the team can't describe the product in one sentence, the design is wrong.
02.
Trust your eye. Then check the data. Then trust your eye again.
03.
Every product has a temperature. Most are room temperature. Boring.
04.
Print the moodboard. Tape it to a wall. Look at it tired.
02
SELECTED WORK · 2022 → NOW
Three I'd put in a museum.
Each one with the brand DNA that everyone said was "too much," right up until they shipped and people loved them.
01 · CASE STUDY
consumer fintech
Pluma Bank
A neobank that doesn't pretend to be your friend.
Led the design system, the consumer onboarding, and the brand → product translation that took Pluma from a Notion-doc startup to a 380k-user neobank in eighteen months. The bet: lean into the bureaucratic Mexican banking aesthetic instead of running from it. Embossed serifs. Numeric grids. The blue of every form your tía ever signed.
380k
USERS
4.8★
APP STORE RATING
ADC
GOLD CUBE, '24
BANK GREEN
#B6F060
the colour of Mexican tax forms, but on purpose
→ open case study
↗
AN ACTUAL QUOTE
"It's the only music app I open that doesn't make me feel like I'm being sold to."
— TechCrunch
→ open case study
↗
02 · CASE STUDY
consumer music app
Sebo Records
A music app that feels like a real record shop.
Independent music discovery for people who miss browsing. Built the visual system from scratch — physical media inspiration, tactile interactions, deliberately slow scrolling. The product feels like dust on your hands in the best way. Six months from blank Figma to launch, with two engineers, one writer, and a thousand sketches I'll never throw away.
120k
MONTHLY LISTENERS
6 mo
0 → LAUNCH
SOI
FEATURED, MAY '25
03 · CASE STUDY
florist e-commerce
Florería Studio
Flowers, on a phone, that still feel like flowers.
A six-week rebuild of a local florist's online shop. The owner — María — kept saying the old site "smelled like nothing." That became the brief. Hand-drawn type, generous white space, photography that's been shot in actual sunlight. Online revenue tripled in eight weeks. María mailed me an actual bouquet.
+212%
REVENUE, 8 WKS
6 wk
BRIEF → LAUNCH
1 ✿
BOUQUET RECEIVED
SCOPE
✦ Brand refresh
✦ Custom display type
✦ Storefront, end-to-end
✦ Packaging stickers
→ open case study
↗
03
MY PROCESS, MOSTLY
Four moves I make on every project.
Drawn from too many half-finished projects, and the four that worked.
01
Walk around.
Before opening Figma I spend a week looking at things that have nothing to do with the brief. Books, packaging, my abuela's kitchen.
02
Pick a colour.
Colour is the first decision and it changes everything downstream. I pick it in week one and defend it like a religion.
03
Sketch ugly.
Forty screens in pencil. Most are bad. The two that aren't bad usually solve a problem the brief didn't mention yet.
04
Polish, ruthlessly.
Two weeks on micro-interactions, motion, the corner radius of a single button. The product is only ever as good as its smallest moment.
04
TOOLS · STACK · WEAPONS
What's on the desk.
Figma
Procreate
After Effects
Glyphs
Framer
a Risograph
Linear
Notion
Pantone book ('72)
Muji pens
good coffee
Brian Eno (Music for Airports)
saying "no"
05
CURRENTLY OBSESSED WITH
Things stuck in my head this season.
BOOK
Ways of Seeing — John Berger
re-reading the chapter on advertising for the seventh time
FOUND TYPE
Hand-painted signs in Coyoacán
going to digitize them as a custom typeface — somebody stop me
PROBLEM
Why does every fintech still look the same?
writing a long essay about it. nobody asked. publishing in May
MUSIC
Juana Molina — Halo (2017)
design music. plays on loop until I finish a project. sorry to my neighbours
SIDE QUEST
Designing my abuela's bakery sign
she rejected three drafts. she was right every time
PET PEEVE
Stop using Inter for everything.
love you Rasmus. but the world has more than one typeface
06
ROUTE TAKEN
Eight years, four offices, one notebook.
2023 → now
Membrana
— Senior Product Designer
Consumer software, Series A. Owner of the design system, the marketing site, and the strong opinions about what "premium" actually means.
2020 → 2023
Pluma Bank
— Product Designer → Lead
Neobank. Started as the second designer, left as the head of design for consumer. Designed everything you tap and most things you read.
2018 → 2020
Studio Postal
— Junior Designer
Small brand studio. Learned how to set type, present client work without flinching, and pull all-nighters that I no longer pull.
2014 → 2018
UNAM, BFA Graphic Design
Four years drawing letters until my professor pried Helvetica out of my hands. Best $0 I ever spent.
07
WHAT TEAMMATES SAY
Quotes I'd put on a tote bag.
"
Lola will fight you on a corner radius and then send you a moodboard at 11pm that makes you realize she was right. The most colour-aware person I've worked with.
Mateo Solís
Head of Product · Membrana
"
She's the rare designer who can show you ten directions on Tuesday and then have a strong opinion about which one is right by Thursday. Engineering loves her.
Ana Beltrán
CTO · Pluma Bank
"
I told Lola the brief was "smelled like nothing." Most designers would've laughed. She put it on the title page of the proposal. The site now smells like jasmine.
María Estrada
Owner · Florería Studio
08
PLAYGROUND · SIDE QUESTS
Things I made because I felt like it.
No briefs, no clients, no deadlines. The work that keeps the rest of the work honest.
TYPEFACE
Coyoacán Display
an in-progress display face from hand-painted neighborhood signs
POSTER SERIES
100 days of grids
one poster every day, no theme — only the grid changes
ZINE
"Bad Pixels" (issue 04)
a quarterly riso-printed zine on screens that smelled bad
TEACHING
Color is a verb.
a 6-week workshop for designers stuck in greyscale. next cohort: June
09
ENOUGH SCROLLING — LET'S TALK
Make something loud.
Booking selectively for Q1 '27 onward. Open to senior design roles at companies that won't blink at a 30-page deck about color, fractional consulting for founders who want a real second opinion, and brand → product engagements that need an actual designer in the room.
ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNET
→ instagram.com/lola.qns
→ are.na/lola-quinones
→ read.cv/lola
→ working / out of CDMX
© 2026
Lola Quiñones
·
made with too much coffee & not enough sleep