Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture

Client: FilAm ARTS

Visual Identity

Marketing Collateral

FilAm ARTS is a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles advocating for Filipino-American and Pilipino culture by connecting people through facilitating arts and culture programming.

The organization was preparing for their 27th Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture (FPAC) and had to revive their presence after a three-year hiatus. Lacking any sort of visual guidelines, I was tasked to work the creative director, Celina Taganas-Duffy, to develop a fresh visual identity and produce marketing materials within 1.5 months.

Visual Identity

We were looking to create a visual identity that would reflect both the traditional and modernity of Filipino culture. We chose to keep the original FPAC logo, which has been a historical symbol of the festival, and added on the element of a ‘tattoo belt’ to refresh it.

Hand-tapped tattoos, or batok, were a big part of indigenous Filipino culture; this was our homage to our ancestral, traditional side of our culture. I conducted research on the symbolism of specific markings, consulting Lane Wilcken, a cultural tattoo practitioner, and his book “Filipino Tattoos: Ancient to Modern”, to ensure the tattoo belt was Filipino-specific.

There were 10 disciplines to be performed during the festival and corresponding icons in Tagalog, designed by Rhian Advincula, were created to differentiate the artists’ categories. These icons were implemented on artist biographies, performance videos, and on the FilAm ARTS' website as banners.

Translated from left to right: Comedy, Culinary, Dance, Filipino Martial Arts, Theatre, Music, Literature, Visual, Traditional, and Film and Television.