Finfo Logo System
Studying design has made me appreciate the meaningful decisions that go into making a final output. A key lesson that I learned is oftentimes, “because it’s pretty” isn’t a good enough answer to support your creative decisions. Hence, I thought it would be a great idea to share my creative process through blog posts about my projects. By writing about the rationale behind my work, I hope to give insight on how the design process works, and inspire your own creative workflow.
“Finfo is a footwear brand that aims to celebrate Filipino culture through the revival of a traditional shoe called bakya.”
Finfo is a footwear brand that aims to celebrate Filipino culture through the revival of a traditional shoe called bakya. It is also my capstone project. The brand is inspired by my research on using fashion to challenge internalized oppression among Filipinos. The word Finfo is a combination of the words Filipino, information, and footwear.
There are many components to my project that I would love to share in future posts, but for now I want to focus on the logo system that I designed for the brand.
Finfo logo system
One quote that stood out to me when I was doing design research is by Gino Gonzalez, costume designer and co-author of the book Fashionable Filipinas. In his interview for the podcast Dressed: The History of Fashion, he said that “[The Philippines’] national dress’ (the terno) history is one of subtraction. Over the decades, parts have been removed as a concession to modernity and practicality… Today there are even some attempts by designers to radically reduce the size of the butterfly sleeves to ordinary puff sleeves so in effect we are left with an ordinary dress”.
The quote struck me because I realized that the representation of the Filipino identity oftentimes gets lost due to intense subtraction. This can be attributed to internalized oppression or the cultural identity crisis that Filipinos commonly experience. This gave me the idea to choose an overtly Filipino symbol to incorporate into my logo system.
“…the representation of the Filipino identity gets lost due to intense subtraction… This gave me the idea to choose an overtly Filipino symbol to incorporate into my logo system. “
Finfo logo development
I chose to use the 3 stars and a sun symbol seen on the Philippine flag. I was especially interested in incorporating the sun from the flag because it represents liberty, which encapsulates the values of Finfo. The 8 rays symbolize the towns that first revolted against the Spanish colonizers.
Using the typeface Freight Display Pro for its playful yet sophisticated character, I created different variations of the logo through different conceptual symbols, wordmarks, and monograms. I eventually decided to simply create a wordmark and monogram as I thought it would be more appropriate for a footwear brand.
Started out by making conceptual symbols. Didn’t end up going with any of it.
A few Finfo wordmark variations
I hope you enjoyed this post. I’m so excited to continue sharing my creative process with you. There will definitely be more posts about Finfo. A small shoe collection, photo shoot, and look book are all in the works (well and a research paper #RoadtoGraduation).