What’s a Pinoy to do without discourse? With the possible exception of karaoke, nothing identifies Filipinos as much as a love of discussion and debate. Preferably, with an audience. As part of the week-long festival, Manila Design Week+Design Dialogue gathered visual communicators, advertising and media practitioners, graphic designers, neo-historians, cultural revivalists, and members of the academe for just that chance at a display of words. Words, that would hopefully translate to cohesive ideas, become icons, and from there, transform into one brand.
It was an SRO crowd, the audience spilling along the aisles and onto the lounge of MyCinema at Greenbelt 3 where the theatre action-dialogue was transmitted through widescreen television. The pioneer Design Dialogue featured speakers were Teeny Gonzales-DDB Philippines executive creative director on “Ako Mismo”, Nandy Villar-McCann Worldgroup Philippines managing director on “I Am Ninoy”, Melvin Mangada-TBWASantiago Mangada Puno executive creative director and partner on “Design in Advertising”, David Guerrero-BBDO Guerrero chairman and chief creative officer on “Branding a Country”, Jowee Alviar-Team Manila on “Manila’s Visual Culture” and Carlos Celdran-Artist/Blog Owner of WalkThisWay on “Pocket Manila”. Top photographer Neal Oshima’s images of the Philippines capped the presentations.
Robert Alejandro-RAA Design founder and owner, and Clara Balaguer of Team Manila moderated the open forum that would be Project 20/20’s Philippine debut. Inspired by a European effort called Democreated, Project 20/20 is for “movers and shakers who will get together to talk about what can be done to rebrand the Philippines, both internationally and locally, in a relevant and effective manner, and to present the project to Malacañang in a symbolic, peaceful, non-intrusive but offbeat fashion,” from the Manila Design Week organizers. True to its symbolic numbers, Project 20/20 plans full implementation by 2020.
With “Ako Mismo” and “I Am Ninoy”, Gonzales-DDB and Villar-McCann, respectively, have had hands-on experience with national branding. Mangada-TBWASMP, on the other hand, is the creator of the “Hugs” campaign for Absolut Vodka, chosen for the brand’s global campaign. The advertising creatives acknowledged Celdran’s Pinoy metaphor of halo-halo (hodge-podge) culled from centuries of colonization, but maintained that with the advent of the world wide web, information was quick and little mattered demographics of nationality, geography and race. Mangada and Villar stressed the importance of creative, effective and memorable advertising that would brand Filipino talent for the whole world to receive and accept. Gonzales specifically mentioned a British in-law who adored Team Manila t-shirts to emphasize cross-cultures.
Swedish bestselling author of IdeaBook, Fredrik Hären’s perspective from a developed world was a welcome twist to the emerging paradigms. With Balaguer, Celdran and Guerrero espousing the importance of a unifying, symbolic Filipino icon, Joey Ong-Bates 141 executive creative director chimed in with the question: “What could be more iconic than the map of the Philippines?”
As the country’s communicators, creatives and conceptualists convened and connected, Design Dialogue provided the setting: intimate, insightful and introspective—yet expansive—exchange on being a Filipino. Perhaps, even, a celebration of. In light of Manila Design Week, Design Dialogue was a forum on national identity, citizen responsibility and social awareness with the purpose of projecting one quintessential Filipino brand.
On its own, Design Dialogue is a call to action: Let us look at the Filipino with fresh eyes. What do we see? Our favorite past-time might just pay off one day. Let’s start communicating!
