Filipino Student Society of the University of Sydney
Bringing the Filipino Spirit to Sydney
Since its inception in 2017, the executives at the Filipino Student Society of the University of Sydney (FSSUSYD) have always had the values of Pakikisama, Pagsusulong, and Pagtataguyod in organizing its events and showcasing itself as a strong community of Filipinos in Australia embodying the Filipino spirit. Naturally, this mission and spirit would also be driven throughout the club's visual paraphernalia and online presence.
Prior to 2021, FSSUSYD struggled to develop an official and consistent branding identity. As a result, its former creative director, Beng Paderanga, fully realized and developed its creative direction in 2022, leading to the development of the FSSUSYD brand guidelines.
Development
I had the immense privilege and opportunity to be elected as the 2023 Creative Director of FSS USYD. My work involved creating online publication materials and refining the newly established creative direction of FSS USYD by introducing visual elements that made our brand look more distinctly Filipino. This helped it stand out from the other culture-based clubs of the University of Sydney and become a design staple for the years to come.
Logo Redesign
The new FSS USYD logo, made in 2021, was refined even further to optimize it for multiple graphic instances, such as symmetry, a problem that Beng brought up during our transfer meeting. As such, the new logo is an overall minor improvement from its previous iteration in order for it to be more flexible across its promotional materials.
Among the changes implemented included updating the Anahaw leaf on the lower half and the Jacaranda flowers to utilize vectors instead of rasterized illustrations. Symmetry to make the logo more readable in white space with each of the Anahaw leaf's spines. Instead of a soft brush for the Jacarandas to denote depth, a dark vector was used with a darker shade of purple.
All other original elements were retained and refined including improving kerning from the text using the Maragsa typeface and rewriting the hand-writted Baybayin texts on top.
Brand material development
The face of the rebrand was most evidently seen in its new approach to the marketing material. Instead of having a single material for one post, FSS USYD took a larger canvas approach to the pubmat, where all the pubmats are made in a 3x1 format that fills the entire grid for Instagram, the preferred social media platform of university students. This allowed the design of each publication material to have a more expressive and artistic approach by allowing the activity to be incorporated into a Philippine landscape. I wanted to focus on tourist areas in the Philippines to bring a more Filipino sense of design and pride to the pubmats.
This development coincided with the overall goal of FSS USYD to bring in and promote the Filipino culture and spirit in Australia, keeping in touch with our roots in the Philippines. As a result, concepts such as playing golf at the Banaue rice terraces for our Holey Moley golf event, or bouldering the limestone cliffs of Coron were visualized.
A common element of all the FSS USYD publication materials is the incorporation of Philippine weave patterns in the backgrounds of each design as the backbone representing our heritage. Our design was based on the Gaddang weave of Northern Luzon for its flexibility and overall aesthetic appeal, blending in with our character's silhouettes and the texts.
Additionally, as the creative director, I held full aesthetic control on what goes onto the social media accounts of FSS USYD. A big responsibility that I held for every post we make is to make sure that it feels consistent across all of our posts to make our feed as attractive and richly-color-coded as possible, allowing our account to stand out from the rest of the USU societies or the other Filipino societies from other Universities.
Case 1: Welcome Week
Welcome Week is the biggest week during the start of every semester in the University of Sydney. This is where all the clubs start to showcase who they are to recruit new members. For FSS USYD, since this was one of my first tasks, it involved the introduction of new executives into the society. As such, material developed during this time leaned heavily into the brand guidelines with the use of the FSS USDY logo colors and font pairings in a template manner for each FSS USYD executive.
As for the Welcome Week post itself, we incorporated a travel stamp and postcard-inspired approach to showcase our club as one based on our culture and invite new members to visit the Philippines. This was decorated with illustrations of native Philippine flora and fauna to showcase our country's immense biodiversity.
Case 2: Salubong
Salubong is our get-together event, which invites all members of the society to meet, come together, and celebrate being a part of FSS USYD. This event establishes the tone of the events to come by being one of the first posts to be made by FSS USYD. The creation of the Instagram posts was the biggest part of preparing for Salubong, as it had to stand out from other introduction events held by other societies during that time. As such, following the direction of bringing a Filipino sense of design (such as the use of a vibrant palette of colors and a Filipino font) to the pubmats became a crucial element in making our materials stand out. These new design elements were also brought into our Powerpoint presentations, which involved several games and trivia to keep our members entertained.
Co-branding Cases
With the Filipino community at Sydney being a closely-knit one, collaborations between several FSS communities would be commonplace. This case also applies with the collaborations of FSS USYD.
Case 3: FSS USYD x FiloSoc UNSW Badminton
For our badminton event with the Filipino Student Society of UNSW (FiloSoc UNSW), we've decided to mashup elements of our brand guides in our design, incorporating the Batangas header font and the more defined silhouette inspirations from FiloSoc UNSW and the overall format and backgrounds from FSS USYD. With both FSS USYD and FiloSoc UNSW elements incorporated in the design, they'll be easier to blend in each society's Instagram grid to keep the branding of both societies consistent.
The concept and publication materials were made possible in several meetings with FiloSoc UNSW's Creatives Director Alex Linga and Marketing & Sponsorship Director Kristen Gutierrez.
Final Post
First Draft
Case 4: FSS USYD x FSA UTS Karaoke
For our karaoke event with the Filipino Student Association of UTS (FSA UTS), our setting was different, with a much shorter and hectic timeline due to the pressures of Finals week. As a result, design development for this Karaoke event was done with less revisions and a much faster turnaround.
Project pain points were easily resolved because the marketing materials of both societies had similar design schemes. The font choice of Maragsa was an easy choice for this case as it is a major font shared by both FSS USYD and FSA UTS. Because the event was a karaoke, we thought of using Filipino festival colors, particularly the vibrant colors of Masskara, as our means of making the Karaoke concept extremely colorful and attractive for both society's core audiences. Lastly, since FSS USYD already held a previous karaoke event, much of the style and layout was reused in order to make new material, making the final post as fast as possible.
The concept and publication materials were made possible through back-and-forth chats with FSA UTS Graphic Designer Jerica and Marketing Director Czeyden Raposas.
Final Post
Old Karaoke Event
Additional Post Archive
Instagram Stories
Quickly consumed and often glossed over, the Instagram Stories medium is a difficult one to grasp. As such, we wanted to make sure that whatever content we have over at our Instagram stories should be attractive and attention-grabbing for our Filo-Aussie audiences to check out our events or announcements. To make things easy, we prioritized using our color palette and font in order to keep our materials recognizable from a quick glance,
Additional Photography
Although I was elected primarily to design or illustrate content for FSS USYD, I also utilized my skills as a photographer to cover some of the events of FSS USYD, including Salubong and the announcement of our Junior Officers!
