Asteria

Branding for a designer jewelry store

Role: Branding Designer
Client: Asteria, jewelry store
Timeline: Oct - Nov 2025

Project Overview

Asteria is a boutique jewellery studio located in Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires, a neighborhood known for its independent designers, curated aesthetics, and fashion-forward culture.

The brand was born from a mother–daughter partnership, inspired by the family’s Venetian grandmother, Asteria. She was known for her love of gems, stones, and objects with emotional resonance. Her name — meaning “of the stars” — became the foundation for the brand’s identity.

My role was to create a visual identity that captured this lineage: heritage + mythology + contemporary chic, expressed through refined simplicity.

Problem

The jewellery market in Palermo Soho has two dominant extremes:

  1. Ultra-minimalistic brands: clean, trend-driven, but emotionally flat.

  2. Overly decorative brands: expressive but visually heavy or old-fashioned.


Asteria needed a visual identity that avoided both traps.

The brand had to feel:

soft

✦

mythic

✦

chic

✦

modern

✦

artisanal

✦

design-focused

✦

elevated

✦

soft ✦ mythic ✦ chic ✦ modern ✦ artisanal ✦ design-focused ✦ elevated ✦

And above all — unique, reflecting the story of three generations of women connected through craft, metal, and light.

Research

Brand & Market

  • Visual codes of contemporary jewellery brands (Argentina + international)

  • Palermo Soho’s retail language: curated, minimal, highly designed

  • Differentiation patterns: tone of voice, color palettes, typography, materials

Mythology & Etymology

“Asteria” comes from Greek mythology, a figure associated with falling stars, nocturnal light, and celestial glow. This became the symbolic backbone of the brand.

Craft & Materiality

The jewellery is handcrafted using silver, gold & silver plating, surgical steel and crystals & semi-precious stones.

These materials inspired the brand's palette, textures, and the elegant geometric star symbol.

Key Insights

Three insights shaped the creative direction:

1. Jewellery is emotional storytelling.
People don’t buy metal, they buy meaning, memory, connection.

2. Luxury is shifting.
Modern luxury is quiet, intentional, and minimal, not ornamental.

3. Asteria’s value is its lineage.
Mother–daughter founders + heritage from the grandmother = natural symbolic system.
This became the conceptual core of the brand.

Asteria captures the instant when light touches material — when a gem glows, a metal reflects, a stone reveals its inner fire.

Brand Concept

My branding proposal was driven by emotion + craft + symbolism.

This concept translated into:

✦ A luminous, soft gold palette

✦ A serif type with organic, almost mythic curves

✦ A refined star symbol

✦ Dual stars → mother and daughter

✦ Composition that feels calm, intentional, crafted

Outcome

✦ A modern, refined brand deeply rooted in heritage

✦ A visual language that feels both mythic and contemporary

✦ A timeless palette that works across jewellery materials

✦ A logo system expressive enough for luxury, minimal enough for modern retail

✦ Clear differentiation in a saturated boutique jewellery market

The identity now supports packaging, store visuals, product cards, branding for social content, labels, gift bags and e-commerce foundations.

Learning

This project taught me the power of:

✦ Building brands from authentic stories

✦ Designing with symbolic depth

✦ Balancing editorial elegance with retail clarity

Asteria showed me that when a brand has a true story, the design naturally aligns with its essence.