DIPALI PATEL
Toronto · Graphic Design Lead & Marketing NA Lead, STAEDTLER North America

I lead the brand work for STAEDTLER in North America.

Toronto brand designer and marketing specialist running launches, campaigns, and brand systems end to end, including the North American launch of the Noris 122, the most recognizable pencil in the world. The work ships at volume: 200+ marketing assets a month across Amazon, Walmart, Staples, and Meta, and social channels grown 7.5× on Instagram to 46,481 followers and 2.7× on Facebook to 41,431 since July 2024.

Get In Touch
200+
monthly assets from one guideline system
Noris 122
North American launch creative
7.5× · 2.7×
Instagram to 46,481 · Facebook to 41,431 — social growth since July 2024
AI-assisted
production, same brand discipline
Brands I've worked with
Selected Work

Work that had to ship.

Five areas of practice, one discipline: the brand reads as itself everywhere it shows up.
Motion
More work
Showreel

The work, in under thirty seconds.

Brand systems, packaging, campaign key visuals, and the social presence behind them. Silent by design.

6+ years turning strategy into shelf-ready, screen-ready creative.

Graphic Design Lead and Marketing NA Lead at STAEDTLER North America. I build the guideline systems, launch campaigns, and executive presentation decks that keep a brand coherent across packaging, retail, and screen, and I build AI-assisted production into the workflow: faster comps and versioning, same discipline. OCAD University, Bachelor of Design. Based in Toronto.
© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
About

Brand systems that hold at every touchpoint.

Open to brand design, art direction, and creative lead roles

I'm a Toronto-based brand designer and marketing specialist with 6+ years of experience helping consumer brands show up consistently — across digital, retail, and multi-platform campaigns. Right now, I'm Graphic Design Lead and Marketing NA Lead at STAEDTLER North America.

My work turns marketing strategy into creative people actually respond to. I specialize in integrated product launches, seasonal campaigns, and high-volume asset production — all while keeping brand consistency tight. I work closely with marketing, product, and sales teams so the creative lines up with business goals and retail timelines, and I bring a production background that keeps things efficient, clear, and accurate right down to the file.

The work asks for the same discipline everywhere: a seasonal calendar that does not move, a high volume of assets, retail timelines with no slack, and a brand that has to look like itself on every surface it touches. My STAEDTLER launch and packaging work is proof I can run that. Next I am looking for brand design and art direction work where the calendar is relentless and the brand shows up everywhere at once.

Bachelor of Design, OCAD University · Toronto, ON

Experience

Where I've done it.

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Education
Bachelor of Design
OCAD University · Toronto, ON
Resume

Work with me

Looking for a designer who can hold a brand together across a hundred touchpoints? I'd love to hear from you.
Get In Touch
Tools & Craft
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Social Media Management

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
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Brand consistency

One brand, many surfaces.

A flyer made for a sales rep and an Amazon brand page built three months later still have to read as the same company. That's the part of the job I'm judged on — here's the same brand across five very different surfaces.
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E-commerce
amazon.com/staedtler
Amazon brand page — artwork across the full catalog, shown as it appears live.
Email
STAEDTLER — New product launch
Promotional email — built for the mailing list, shown in an inbox.
What I do here

What I make.

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Production craft

Mockups a buyer can hold.

Before anything goes to manufacturing, buyers see a physical mockup — correctly sized, correctly finished, close enough to production that the approval means something. Building these is a different skill from designing the artwork, and it's the part that keeps launches on schedule.
One package redesign, left to right — the full cycle behind a single SKU update.
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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
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Social & community

The channels I run.

Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn — content creation, scheduling, and community engagement. Campaigns, giveaways, and drawing contests all run through here.
The feed — campaign, giveaway, and drawing-contest posts, read as one grid. Each tile links to the original post.
Growth — April 2024 to August 2026
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From the monthly channel exports
June 2026
Strongest month on record — and Instagram passes Facebook
July 2024
I take the channels over
Instagram
46,481
Facebook
41,431
10k
20k
30k
40k
50k
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I took over STAEDTLER's North American social channels in July 2024. Instagram has grown 7.5× since and Facebook 2.7×, without diluting engagement — and the growth is still accelerating. June 2026 was the strongest month on record, and the month Instagram passed Facebook.
Design lead, HSN card program

The HSN card program.

I led the HSN card program as design lead, directing a group of designers at my level who produced finished card projects made with STAEDTLER products, created for sale on HSN. I briefed each release, set the creative direction, held the brand and quality standards, and reviewed the output before it went out. The work has to function as a sellable craft object first and a brand piece second — both, every time.
HSN card program — the strongest piece, styled and shot as a finished object.
The range — cards produced by the team under my direction.
What I do here

What I run.

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
← All Work
Integrated Digital Campaign

STAEDTLER Noris® 122

STAEDTLER · North American product launch
The Noris 122 brought STAEDTLER's most recognizable pencil to North America with an eraser tip and a sustainability story worth telling. The stripe is one of the most recognizable pencil liveries in the world, so the work was about earning the right to change anything at all — and the upcycled wood, under PEFC-certified sourcing, gave the launch its point of view. I led the creative from the first key visual through to the product arriving in teachers' hands.
Role
Design Lead — concept through production
Deliverables
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Channels
Retail, e-commerce, email, social, influencer & PR
Timeframe
Full launch cycle, North America
Product design guidelines — the livery, proportions, and claim placement every piece below was built against.
Phases
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{{ nPackaging }} — Brand & packaging

Pack artwork.

Pack artwork built to sit correctly beside the existing Noris family, with the 122's new claims given room without crowding the livery.
Packaging — shot as printed pieces, real substrate and finish.
{{ nRetail }} — Retail & print

In-store, at scale.

Pull-up Banners and promotional print — the same message holding up at standing distance and in the hand.
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Promotional print — hover any tile to cycle through its views.
{{ nDigital }} — Digital & e-commerce

Where the purchase actually happens.

Digital advertising plus the Amazon brand page and product imagery — the work that has to convert with no one standing next to the shelf.
Digital ads — sized per placement from one key visual.
amazon.com/staedtler-noris-122
Amazon brand page — A+ content carrying the launch where the buying decision happens.
Product imagery — claims legible at thumbnail size.
{{ nLaunch }} — The launch campaign

From design to execution.

With the assets built, the launch moved into market: giveaways, creator partnerships, and an influencer program aimed at teachers — the people who put pencils in a hundred hands a day.
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Creator partnerships
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Creator partnerships — reel recaps, looping silently in place.
{{ nPr }} — PR boxes

The unboxing moment.

Designed boxes, contents, and the shipping program that sent them to teacher influencers across North America — built to be filmed, so the reveal had a sequence.
PR boxes — shot as they'd be opened.
{{ nMerch }} — Merchandise

The lineup.

Tote bags, mugs, magnets, and t-shirts — the livery translated onto surfaces it was never drawn for.
Merchandise — presented as a lineup.

One product, one voice, every channel it touched.

The clearest example of how I work: hold the brand steady, build once and adapt deliberately, and stay with a product from the first visual through to someone opening a box on camera.

Challenge

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
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Personal work

Passion

This is the work I make for myself. Across all of it runs the same thread: things made by hand, materials reused rather than bought new, and South Asian art and craft traditions I grew up with. My professional work lives inside other people's brand guidelines. This is where my own voice is.
© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
← Passion
Handmade accessories brand

DIDI Tote Bags

Elevated totes carrying South Asian–inspired art — made by hand, from materials given a second life.
“Didi means sister. It's the name I've always been called — and, fittingly, what my sister calls me back.”
01 — The brand
The brand takes its name from didi — sister, in my mother tongue. It's what I've always been called, and, fittingly, what my own sister calls me in return. The name carries the idea the whole brand is built on: that the things worth keeping are the ones made and passed between hands. Every bag is made that way — by hand, from materials given a second life, carrying artwork drawn from the traditions I grew up with.
DIDI is a small brand of elevated tote bags featuring South Asian–inspired art and handmade jewelry. I designed and made every part of it — the identity, the artwork, the bags, the jewelry, the packaging, the shop, and the photography.
Everything, by me
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02 — Identity

The system.

Logo, wordmark, palette, and type — built as a system so it holds across a hangtag, a label, and a shopfront photo.
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03 — Animation & motion

The mark in motion.

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04 — The product

Screen-printed, stitched, strung.

Product lineup — each bag a different print, the format held constant so the range reads as one brand.
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05 — Craft & process

Made, not ordered.

Screens pulled by hand, labels stitched in one at a time, jewelry strung at the same table, thank-you cards pressed from paper I made. Documented as it happened.
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Close up — print texture, stitch, bead, and pressed paper.
06 — Video & reels

Shot vertical, shown vertical.

Most of the process was documented as reels. They belong at 9:16, at the size they were made for.
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07 — Photography

Styled and shot myself.

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08 — The shop

Built to sell it.

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Shop — the storefront I built, where the identity had to survive a product grid and a checkout.
09 — Instagram

The feed.

Feed — product, process, and print, alternating so the grid stays legible.
In closing
Building a brand alone means every decision is yours and every gap is yours too — there is no one to hand the packaging to, or the photography, or the shipping. It taught me how much of a brand lives in the parts nobody briefs: the weight of the paper, the way a label is sewn, what the box feels like when it arrives. I bring that back to client work, where the same details decide whether a brand feels considered or just designed.
© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
← Passion
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The work

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
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Environmental / Signage

Design you can walk up to.

Environmental work is where design stops being a file and becomes an object. I've designed storefront and interior graphics for clients across industrial supply, beauty, healthcare, and bridal retail, and led vehicle graphics for food trucks, commercial fleets, trailers, and personal vehicles. Every project started with a tape measure and ended with vinyl on glass or metal.
Process

Tape measure to vinyl.

The same six stages carry every project on this page, whether the surface is a shopfront window or the curved flank of a food truck. These frames follow one job the whole way through — the House of Rohl Studio hoarding for EMCO, which appears again below as a finished case.
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Client projects

Four sectors, four visual languages.

A bridal boutique and an industrial supplier ask for opposite things on the glass. The process behind them never changed.

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
← Environmental / Signage
Four clients

Storefront & Interior Graphics

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Environmental craft

What the surface demands.

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
← Environmental / Signage
Wraps & fleets

Vehicle Graphics

I led vehicle graphics end to end — measuring vehicles on site, working directly with clients on the brief, and preflighting artwork so the design survived the jump to a curved, paneled metal surface. A wrap is unforgiving: what looks right flat can break across a wheel arch or a door seam.
Featured project

The 14-vehicle fleet.

Fourteen wraps across different vehicle types, one design system. The challenge wasn't drawing it once — it was holding it consistent across vehicles with different proportions, panel breaks, and surface geometry, so the fleet reads as one brand parked side by side.
Fleet lineup — the system as it reads across the full set.
One system, four body types
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Where the system adapts
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Fourteen vehicles meant fourteen measurement sets, fourteen preflight passes, and one install calendar. I sequenced the artwork so production was never waiting on approvals, tracked revisions per vehicle so nothing was applied from a stale file, and kept sales, client, and installers working from the same schedule. All fourteen delivered on time.
Project range

By vehicle type.

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Team leadership

Running the work, not just doing it.

I managed a small team through this work — delegating projects, carrying my own workload alongside theirs, and keeping every job on schedule. I was the point of contact between sales, client, and production, which meant every change request, measurement correction, and install date came through me and went out documented.
© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
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Retail + Packaging

Retail + Packaging

Packaging artwork, production-accurate mockups, and updates that preserve brand consistency — spanning an ongoing body of work and a single named campaign launch.

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© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
Ongoing Body of Work

STAEDTLER Packaging

An ongoing collection of packaging projects for Staedtler's consumer line, including updates to existing packaging designed to hold brand consistency across the range.
Before / After
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The Progression · One Example
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Gallery
Campaign

MLB The Show 24 × PRESTO

PlayStation · MLB · Metrolinx
Role
Packaging Designer (production & print files)
Deliverables
Packaging artwork, dielines, print production
Partners
PlayStation, MLB, Metrolinx
Year
2024
Overview
A limited-run packaging and promotional launch built around the MLB The Show 24 partnership with Metrolinx's PRESTO card. I did the creative and artwork for the card and packaging, and led the print-ready dielines through production.
The Card / Packaging
Packaging — printed card pack; creative and artwork by me.
Dielines
Dielines — production-ready flats I built to spec for die-cutting and print.
Final Product
Final product — the printed, produced pieces as they shipped.
Video
Video — launch film for the campaign.
My role: creative and artwork for the card and packaging, plus print production and dielines.
© 2026 Dipali Patel
Toronto, ON
Contact

Let's talk.

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