MARIANA MATOS

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Communications & Design Coordinator at Cita Press. Books are open for select new projects & clients. Shoot her an email :)

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PublicATION

Orchid
Boom Book
Condon Report
Shinola Mooncraft Monster

Motion

Bees & Time
Ch-Ching!
Morality 101
The Girlfriends (Coming Soon)

INTERACTION

Space Place Landscape
What We Wore (The Henry Ford Museum)
Design for Disassembly

PACKAGING

Shinola

Mooncraft Monster Packaging
J Dilla Packaging (Concept)
Playing Cards
Logo Refresh
Social Media Asset

frequent collaborators

Morgan Lashbrook, Chris Daniels, Danielle Zito
Zach Fox, Jonnelle Boyd

photography

Brian Bilicki

A hub for my favorite projects I completed during my time at Shinola!

Mooncraft Monster Packaging

The newest iteration of the Shinola Monster Series, the Mooncraft Monster is a manual-wind chronograph inspired by the 400,000 people that worked together to get 3 astronauts to the moon and safely back home.

The book borrows its charactersitics from the so-called “fourth crew member,” the flight plan booklet that was distributed to everyone on board. It’s cover features a map of each Apollo mission’s moon landing site, as well as silver foil debossing. Matching silver foil calls out important watch details on the box inserts.

Creating this packaging meant finding the perfect spot between honoring the Shinola brand guidelines, and designing something special that lives up to the craft and story of the watch (and staying on budget.)

Special thanks to Ash Littles who wrote all copy used in the book; Morgan Lashbrook who assisted with ideation, paper selection, and insert design; Zach Fox who developed the box and inserts; and Jonnelle Boyd who managed this project from ideation through production.

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J Dilla Packaging (Concept)

Shinola’s Great American series honors American innovators and pioneers every year. For 2025, the innovator was Detroit’s very own J Dilla.

The watches are vibrant and colorful.
For the packaging, this meant creating supporting material that let the complex watch face shine, not overwhelm. The watch box was made of clear plastic, continuing the cassette tape inspiration evident in the watch design.

After watching a long Youtube video in order to understand Dilla time (I’m not particularly musically gifted), I created a series of simple patterns to represent straight time, swing time, and Dilla time. The box sleeve, insert, and booklet cover were subdued: a neutral navy colored paper, decorated with clear spot UV to create subtle details. A diecut in the insert would reveal a sneak peak of the watch face.

For the booklet, I figured it would be fitting to make one that folds out into a poster, reminiscent of the fold-out posters of musicians that come with vinyl, CDs, or inside of magazines. One side would feature some information about Dilla, and the other side would be a striking artwork, something one would want to frame and display in their house.

Ultimately, the Shinola team chose to scale this packaging concept way down, opting for something simpler (and cheaper) to produce, but this packaging concept was really fun to work on and remains loved by the design team.

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PLAYING CARDS

After numerous complaints that the numbers were too small on their previous set of playing cards, Shinola tasked me with designing a new set that would come as part of a fancy new poker set.

The design is meant to be timeless, making the card set an ever-green product requiring no major updates.

I used the icons of each suit to create a rotationally symmetric design for each card with the number it represents. The back of the cards and the cardbox feature a design made with all suits.