Alfalfa Studio is a branding and design firm that knows how to position clients to their best advantage with smart strategy and high-impact creative. Our philosophy? Make the idea clear and simple, but the design surprising and beautiful.

We have created award-winning work in many categories, including sports, fashion, culture, entertainment, civic, education, online retail, and hospitality. A boutique-sized studio, we collaborate closely with our clients and offer a full set of services, including brand strategy, brand identity, marks and logos, image-making, animation and film, interactive and Web design, publication design, and dimensional design.

Alfalfa Studio History

Alfalfa Studio was founded in 2004 by Rafael Esquer to create truly inspiring work for clients. Uncompromising about his creative independence, Esquer left the security of his position as a creative director at a multidisciplinary media company, and set up his one-man shop in New York’s Garment District. He began choosing design projects that he could pour his passion into.

Producing award-winning design, Alfalfa Studio flourished from the start. Rather than seeking to grow the studio into a larger agency, Esquer has chosen to keep Alfalfa Studio small and entrepreneurial. It’s a business model that works well to preserve the founding ideal of free artistic expression and to ensure that clients always have direct access to the design team. Now located in SoHo, Alfalfa Studio is proud to be a thriving part of New York’s downtown design culture.

What keeps the Alfalfa team excited about design is the challenge of solving complex problems for clients through simplicity, surprise, and beauty. Their initial approach is from a white canvas, without the overlay of formulas or rules. Yet that canvas is always stretched by personal artistic experience: journeys through the many worlds of language, education, love, literature, film, fine art, pop culture, music, science, politics, travel, and dreams.

While the studio embraces diverse visual styles, points of view, techniques, cultures, and influences, its philosophy is strictly consistent:

Faithful adherence to this philosophy has paid off. In 2007, for example, German publisher Taschen included Esquer in their collection of the world’s 100 most progressive designers working today (Contemporary Graphic Design. Charlotte and Peter Fiell, eds.). Ranging from a local start-up company to a large international corporation, clients at Alfalfa Studio have included Kate Spade New York, The Glass House, Björk, Amphibian Stage Productions, The Houston Rockets, The New York Times Magazine, Nike, AIGA, International Flavors and Fragrances, Tommy Boy Records, Target, Scholastic, Museo del Barrio, The City of New York and MTV.

Alfalfa Studio’s website displays the range of artistic, conceptual, and strategic thinking that we bring to the practice of graphic communications. The projects included here are united by our belief in the emotional power and clear communication of good design, and in the advantages of working without creative restraints.

In 2009, Alfalfa Studio launched Alfalfa New York its own online lifestyle brand. Alfalfa New York designs, produces and sells limited edition products including graphic t-shirts, gift items and tote bags sold exclusively at www.alfalfa-seeds.com and reporting worldwide sales.

Rafael Esquer, Principal

A native of the Sonora desert of Mexico, Rafael Esquer has made New York City his home for more than 15 years. As Creative Director at @radical.media, his group’s work in communication design received the National Design Award in 2004 from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Esquer now runs Alfalfa Studio, his own design studio which was established in 2004. Clients have included The New York Times Magazine, Kate Spade New York, Nike, Björk, AIGA, The Philip Johnson Glass House, The Houston Rockets, Tommy Boy Records, Target, IBM, Scholastic, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., Museo del Barrio, and MTV. Some of his work is contained in the Library of Congress poster collection, the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal, the Poster Museum in Poland and the Olympic Museum in Switzerland.

In 2007, Taschen named Esquer one of the world’s 100 most influential graphic designers working today. (Charlotte and Peter Fiell, eds. Contemporary Graphic Design).

Rafael teaches at the School of Visual Arts, and he has taught at the Art Center College of Design and NYU. He has been a visiting artist in the graduate graphic design program at Yale and served on the board of directors for the American Institute of Graphic Arts/New York.

Esquer currently sits on the Advisory Board for AIGA’s Diversity Archives, where in 2010 he curated the first exhibition of the most significant minority graphic designers over the last 100 years. Esquer received his BFA in graphic design from Art Center College of Design. He studied photography in both Mexico City and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He frequently serves as judge and speaker at national and international design events.

Gabriela Mirensky, Partner

An experienced leader in design management, Gabriela Mirensky is the Director of Client Service and Business Development at Alfalfa Studio.

With deep expertise in project management and design curatorship, Gabriela served for 13 years as the Director of Competitions and Exhibitions at AIGA, the nation’s oldest and largest professional association for design. She is an alumna of the Arts Leadership Institute and the Harvard Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders program.

Active in art and design communities in New York and abroad, Gabriela teaches in the bilingual design program at SVA, serves as a guest critic in the exhibition design program at FIT, sits on the advisory boards of Design Ignites Change and desigNYC, and judges design competitions in the US and Mexico. She is also on the board of directors at MUMEDI, Mexico City’s first design museum.

Gabriela earned her bachelor’s degree in graphic design at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City and her master’s degree in printmaking at CUNY City College in New York. She has lived in New York City since 1988.

Minal Nairi, Senior Designer

Minal joins us from the home of Bollywood, where she designed campaigns for the film industry after earning a bachelor’s degree from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai.

Moving from one bustling city to another, Minal earned a Masters in Communications Design at Pratt Institute in New York. At alfalfa studio, she has worked on projects ranging from branding to interactive. Actively involved with projects for the World Council of People’s for the United Nations, online sports networks, amongst others,
Minal’s incredible attention to detail and love for typography earned her an apprenticeship with legendary letterform designer, Tony DiSpigna.

Her work can be found in several online and print publications, including Communication Arts.