Rebranding Illustrations at Mercado Libre

Context

Prendários — Mercado Libre's vehicle-financing product — had no visual identity of its own: every campaign and screen demanded custom assets, and the product had no recognizable face inside the Mercado Libre universe. I created the identity from the ground up: icon, illustration system, art direction and the visual pillars that still guide the team.

The problem

The vehicle financing product lacked a consistent visual identity, causing recurring effort for the team when creating visual assets and weakening brand recognition across the pawn credit user experience.

Process & decisions

01

An icon born from the five best-selling cars

I started from the vehicles most financed since the product launched — 14 candidates narrowed to 5 — and mapped each one's most recognizable part to a brand attribute: the Logan's mirrors (educational), the Ford KA's grille (innovative), the Onix's windshield (intuitive), the Honda Fit's headlights (technological) and the Sentra's bumper (reliable). Those parts merged into a single drawing, refined step by step to fit Andes guidelines.

02

Happy and Serious: one family, two moods

The car illustrations share one concept but flex by context: rounded, organic forms with an upturned grille — a smile — for celebrations and incentives; squared, grounded forms with a sober face for bureaucracy, alerts and support. Shared elements (headlights, front grille) keep both instantly recognizable as Prendários.

03

Rules that let the team scale

Beyond cars: backgrounds, documents, personas and phone illustrations, each with usage manuals — down to standardized line cuts selectable via component booleans — so any designer can produce on-brand assets without me in the room.

The solution

I led the complete rebrand of the product, creating the entire visual identity from the ground up, including the logo, art direction, and a scalable illustration system, and defined visual pillars that guide the team to this day.

Results

Screens