Small Title
BY BASARILI — LEAD BRAND DESIGNER & STRATEGIST ON THE PROJECT
Your body isn't failing. It's listening.
Strategic rebrand and full identity system for a Dominican-Republic functional nutrition brand — repositioning organic supplements out of the fitness category and into the caregiver-and-sage register where the founder's real story lives.
Client
Year
Role
Pure Native (formerly Pure Rash)
2026
Lead Brand Designer & Strategist on the project
Scope
Brand discovery (Brief + ContraBrief) · Strategic renaming · Brand strategy · Archetype definition · Visual identity · Voice library · Brand book (70 pp.) · Product packaging
Studio
Basarili rd (Dominican Republic)
The challenge
The brand came to Basarili as Pure Rash, a Dominican functional-nutrition brand with two years of organic growth, and an honest founder story. The product worked. The brand didn't.
Three structural problems were holding it back, all reinforcing each other: a name that was actively undermining perceived value, a visual identity that read as low-cost when the product was anything but, and a category position that put the brand on the wrong shelf next to the wrong customers.
The supplement / protein space in DR is dominated by fitness aesthetics — Sunwarrior, BiPro, Pure Protein, Savvy. Bright colors, performance language, gym-bro register. Pure Rash's actual customers weren't there. Whatever the brand became, it had to leave the fitness category and find a different one.
How I thought about it
01
A CONTRABRIEF THAT SURFACED THE REAL PROBLEM
I led discovery by producing a written ContraBrief that consolidated the founder's interview, three buyer-persona profiles (Laura, 29 years, independent professional with digestive issues; Mariana, 38 years, mother prioritizing family wellness; Andrés, 42 years, executive managing inflammation), a competitive audit of four direct competitors, a SWOT, and a defined archetype matrix. The ContraBrief consistently surfaced the same insight that became the project's strategic anchor: people aren't asking for "more protein." They're asking to feel better. The category that sells "more" is saturated. The category that sells listening to the body is empty.
02
RENAMING PURE RASH TO PURE NATIVE
Recommending a rename to a founder with two years of brand equity is one of the highest-stakes moves in brand work. We brought the recommendation in defended: registration risk, English-language semantic problems, and the existing name's inability to carry the strategic repositioning. "Pure Native" answered every test — searchable, legally defensible, semantically clean (native = indigenous, intrinsic, of the body itself), bilingual-friendly, and visually generative. The founder said yes.
03
DEFINE THE ARCHETYPE, THEN BUILD EVERYTHING FROM IT
Using Mark & Pearson's framework, I defined Pure Native as 60% Caregiver (primary — the brand cares about you because you matter; real, sustainable wellness, ingredients you recognize) and 40% Sage (secondary — informed decisions, education-from-connection, making complex nutrition feel simple and trustable). This split is the spine of the entire brand. Every visual, every word, every product decision had to pass through both filters: Is it caring? Is it informed? If a decision read as one without the other, it was wrong.
04
DEFINE THE ARCHETYPE, THEN BUILD EVERYTHING FROM IT
One of the most distinctive moves in this brand book is a single page titled: How we should NOT sound. Most brand books define what a brand is. Few define what it refuses to be. We documented four anti-patterns: exaggerated/miraculous, technical/scientific, extreme fitness (perfect bodies, aesthetic pressure), and aggressive commercial ("Buy now"). That page is what protects the brand from drifting back into category defaults every time someone writes a caption. It's a guardrail, not a guideline.
05
VOICE AS THE BRAND'S LOAD-BEARING ASSET
The voice library was developed with one signature line: "Tu cuerpo no está fallando. Te está escuchando." That single sentence is the brand. It reframes every problem the customer arrives with: inflammation, fatigue, digestive discomfort . It positions Pure Native not as a fix, but as a translator. That's a category of one. Voice rules locked five principles: speak from connection (not fear), invitation (not urgency), simple (not technical), subtle (not aggressive), and clear about what the product actually does.
The system
LOGOTYPE
A clean, geometric sans-serif lockup, "pure native" in lowercase, set in two stacked lines on packaging, single-line on horizontal applications. The typography is intentionally calm and unornamented — the brand's distinctiveness comes from its register, not its decoration.
COLOR SYSTEM
Principal palette
#F7FBDF
Raíz Suave
#2E241C
Cacao Profundo
#CECD92
Semilla Viva
#68663F
Oliva Silvestre
#F4E497
Sol VItal
TYPOGRAPHY
The packaging
LABEL
Application
What the project actually did
*
Renamed the brand from a commercially compromised name (Pure Rash) to a strategically aligned one (Pure Native), resolving registration risk, semantic ambiguity, and category drag in a single intervention.
*
Repositioned the brand out of the fitness category and into the caregiver-and-sage register, where the founder's actual customer base lives. Defined an archetype split (60% Caregiver / 40% Sage) the founder can use to filter every future decision.
*
Built a complete voice library anchored on a single signature line — Tu cuerpo no está fallando. Te está escuchando — that customers and the founder can quote back to each other. That kind of ownable language is a brand's longest-lasting asset.
*
Designed a packaging system that earns the premium price the founder's organic formulations deserve — built to live next to international competitors on a wellness shelf, not below them.
What I learned
The most valuable strategic intervention is sometimes the one the brief didn't ask for. The brief asked for a rebrand. The actual fix was a rename plus a category exit.
Define what the brand refuses to be, not just what it is. The "Como NO debemos sonar" page is the single most useful artifact in this brand book. It's the difference between a brand that holds its position over time and one that drifts back into category defaults the moment a new social manager joins. Negative space is as much a brand asset as what it stands for.
Working inside a studio sharpens the work. Pure Native was developed inside Basarili, with Basarili's creative direction and team review. That filter, where every recommendation has to be defensible to a senior reviewer before it reaches the client, is the same filter the work has to pass when it lands on a hiring manager's desk. I came out of this project with sharper instincts about why, not just what.
Next project
CONNECT.
LET'S
Great brands start with
a conversation.
Made with friction / Designed to feel