The Early Years

I was born in Fomento, a small town in central Cuba's Sancti Spíritus province. My father, Ismael Valdivia, became a doctor after growing up as the son of two farmers. My mother, Rosa María Vilvey, was an accountant who had been raised by her aunt and came from a family of Spanish descent. My brother, Alex, arrived two and a half years before me and would eventually become a designer as well. Before I understood anything about careers or creative identity, these were the people and the place that formed the world around me.

Creativity was part of the atmosphere in my family long before I knew it could become a career. My father is a self-published poet and has always been reading, while his brothers were theater directors. My brother grew up with a guitar attached to his hip. Their example made creative and intellectual curiosity feel like a natural part of everyday life. I found my own version of that via drawing, comic books, and an early fascination with video games. Drawing was the first creative ability that felt distinctly mine. It gave me a way to practice, improve, and express ideas that had not yet become words.

As conditions in Cuba became increasingly difficult, an opportunity to leave opened through a family member in Costa Rica. Like many immigrant families in Latin America, we moved in search of better opportunities. That departure became the first of many moves across countries, cities, and neighborhoods. Repeatedly arriving as an outsider taught me to observe the social dynamics around me and decide when and how to participate in them. It shaped my worldview, making adaptation feel normal and giving me a lasting awareness of how people find their place within a group.

That combination of creative exposure and constant change gave me a need to make things of my own. I knew I could draw, and I wanted a life that kept me close to the feeling of creating, but the form it would take was still unclear. The answer began to appear when I encountered graphic design: a practical discipline that could connect art, communication, and technology.