Portfolio Highlights
Nina Otsubo Cataldo is a bicultural storyteller, intercultural communication specialist, and Japan expert who has spent over a decade building a career that refuses to fit neatly into one box. She's conducted diversity workshops for NHK producers and directors, written for the Japan Times and Live Japan, founded Hafu Ladies — a global community for mixed-heritage women — interpreted for Peace Boat across 20+ countries, and is deeply embedded in regional Niigata while staying connected to the world beyond it. BBC has come calling. The Times has taken notice. She's the kind of person who makes you feel at home in a room you weren't sure you belonged in — and does it in two languages without you noticing.
She came to me because her website wasn't keeping up. With so many facets to her work: writing, facilitation, tourism consulting, media, bilingual coordination, speaking, retreats... it was hard for visitors to understand who she was, what she did, and how to work with her. The visual identity had grown dated, and the site lacked the warmth, structure, and cultural depth that Nina brings to everything else in her life. She needed a digital home that finally caught up to her.
Nina Cataldo
Website Sprint (branding + website design, in one week)
The Project Scope
Intercultural communicator, storyteller, media personality & Japan specialist
industry
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Nina's work spans so many spaces that the biggest risk was designing something too narrow — a "Japan brand" or a "consultant brand" that flattened her into one thing. Every decision, from color to copy to site structure, was made to hold the full range of who she is.
The Approach
→ With a decade of press, speaking, facilitation, and published writing to her name, the challenge was curation: not volume. We designed a portfolio page that leads with impact, highlights her best work in digestible project cards, and points to her full writing archive without overwhelming the visitor.
Portfolio & Content Strategy
→ The existing site had too many pages pulling in different directions. We rebuilt the structure from scratch: consolidating her media, portfolio, and client work into one cohesive page, and organizing her services in a way that finally made it easy for visitors to find the right way to work with her.
Site Architecture
→ We built a visual identity from the ground up: a custom palette with an editorial serif wordmark that feels like a byline in a quality magazine. Warm, globally minded, and unmistakably Nina without leaning on a single visual cliché.
Brand Identity
→ Every page was written to speak directly to Nina's audience: opening with their pain points and desires, moving into her story, and closing with a clear sense of who she is and how to work with her. Her about page in particular was crafted to hold both depth and range without losing the warmth that makes Nina, Nina.
Website Copywriting
The Before
Nina's existing site had the bones of someone doing impressive work, but none of it came through clearly. The visual identity felt dated and mismatched, the navigation was cluttered with overlapping pages, and her services were buried under layers of content that made it hard to understand what she actually offered or how to hire her. For someone with her range of experience, the site was underselling her at every turn. Visitors landed and left without a real sense of who Nina was — or why she was exactly the person they needed.
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The Result
A website that finally feels like Nina — warm, globally fluent, and unmistakably her own.
The brand and site now reflect the decade of work, relationships, and cross-cultural experience she's built... and leaves plenty of room to grow into the media career, retreats, and streaming show she's working toward next.
