Ana Cristina Quintero didn't plan to be a designer. She started university unsure of her direction, took a job at a design boutique, then pivoted to a consultancy, and it was the pandemic — and a business partner with a proposal — that changed the course of things. By the time she graduated, she and that partner had built PepperSpace, a creative agency in Bogotá that has since worked with more than 180 clients. The turning point wasn't a single project or a professor. It was the moment she understood what brand creation actually was: a practice that never stops challenging you, one where every client opens a new universe.
Her philosophy sits at the intersection of creativity, logic, and research — and she's insistent that brand and business model are never separate things. A brand cannot exist as a silo, she says, and her methodology reflects that. Growing up in a culture where storytelling runs through everything — folk tales, family history, conversation — Ana Cristina found her medium in brand creation. Bogotá shapes her work constantly: colour palettes pulled from street vendors' fruit, from mountain light, from puddles. She goes to the spaces her clients' audiences inhabit. The city is primary material, not just backdrop.
Can you tell us a little about your first few steps in your career. Was there a moment or experience when you realised this was what you'd do as a career?
My first job was at a design boutique agency in my 2nd year of university. At that point I was unsure of what I wanted to do and graphic design had never been in my plans. I event started working at a consultancy firm after that first job.
It was in the pandemic, on my 3rd year of university, when I was tired of working at the consultancy, that my business partner approached me with the proposal of building a creative agency. But it wasn't until a year later, whilst graduating university, that I realised building this agency, working with clients, and continuously learning about design as a holistic practice was what I wanted to do with my career.
I think that when I understood the power of brand creation, how it never stopped challenging me and the new universes I could build with each client, is when I realised that I wanted and needed my professional future to be combination of creativity, logic, and research.
What lessons from your career have most shaped your style and approach?
Tell us about the core values or philosophies that guide your creative practice.
What needs to change, so emerging and under-represented creative professionals have more opportunity, are seen and heard?
The idea of what design and creative work is. After working with more than 180 clients, most of them medium sized enterprises, I have identified that there is a misunderstanding into what is design and, hence, the value behind it. Educating other industries towards seeing design as a methodology of identifying problems and developing solutions, rather than just a visual practice, opens new opportunities to emerging and under-represented creative professionals in a contexts that values their worth.
Additionally, creative professionals also need to start inhabiting spaces and positions that aren't traditionally made of designers. As designers we are inherently good at analysing problems from different angles, prototyping, experimenting, organising... all of these skills are needed in jobs beyond the traditional designers role such as project and team management. With more creatives on these types of roles, there starts to be a shift in the understanding of what a designer is capable of doing, thus opening more opportunities for the industry as a whole.
How important is it that creative professionals find their unique voice?
Looking ahead, what do you think are the key factors that will influence change for creative professionals?
How much does your city influence your work?
Bogotá 100% influences my work, I am romantic at heart and easy to awe with the simplest things of my city. I find myself always making up new colour palettes from the street vendors' fruits, to the mountains and even puddles.
Moreover, as most of my clients are stationed here, I also try to go out in the city to the spaces they and their audience inhabit to gather a better understanding of their context and use it as primary material in my design process.
How much does your culture influence your work?
Colombian culture influences my work in more ways than I am probably aware of, however the one I believe permeate the most in my work is story telling.
I live within a culture where stories are predominant in conversations: from traditional folk tales, to gossip and family remembrances. This has developed in me a passion for story telling and finding different mediums to do so, one of them being brand creation.
Tell us some of your favourite, creative professionals and inspiring places in your city!
Ana María Rueda is a brilliant and sensitive Colombian artist. I have known her from a very young age and continue to amaze myself with her ever evolving work. To me, she is a great reference of perseverance, evolution and mastery.
Design House Colombia is a biennially exhibition organised by NC where different Colombian designers are invited to create spaces within a house. In its own way, it expands the limits of design through the use of materials and compositions, resulting in an emerging experience of what interior design can be when left limitless.