About Luis
Luis Ramirez is co-founder and art director at Cast Iron LA, a senior-led marketing agency built on a simple premise: small team, big agency experience, less bureaucracy, more outcomes.
He’s been early to every shift. He learned offset printing at a newspaper in high school and mastered design software before most designers knew it existed. At RPA, he joined the interactive department when digital was still a side conversation, eventually leading clients through social media, app development, and the mobile revolution. He was in the room when those playbooks were being written.
In 1996, he was creative lead on Honda’s landmark website, one of the first major automotive digital experiences. He stayed with Honda for years after, launching the brand on social media and leading digital marketing efforts as the channels evolved. Other clients have included Hilti, Pentax, AM/PM, and ARCO.
Early on, he designed the Ozomatli logo as part of a college project that turned into something bigger. What started as a performance deal for a Dia de los Muertos event became a symbol that’s traveled the world with the band for nearly three decades. That project taught him something that still shapes his work: brand symbols need to live in the real world, not just on mood boards. They need to hold up on a stage, on a t-shirt, on album art, and in the hands of fans who make them their own.
He continues to push creative direction while building production systems and integrating AI workflows that accelerate output without sacrificing craft. Not as an experiment. As the new standard for agencies willing to use every tool available to deliver better work, faster, for their clients.
He runs Cast Iron LA alongside his long-time partner J. Barbush, keeping senior talent close to the work and clients close to the people doing it.
When he’s not building campaigns, he’s smoking meat, curating playlists with obsessive attention to cover art, or sitting in a gym watching his daughters play volleyball.
Based in Los Angeles.