download the entire issue here.

a collaboration with Graphic Designer, Kara Bermejo

Quite taken with the lighthouse and all its emotional resonances, light was an inspiration for both the visual language and the overall copy direction. Taking the strong graphic device of a ray of light to frame lush photography, the brochure utilized the various nuances of light as expressed by common idioms to capture the experience of being at the Lighthouse Marina Resort.

The format lent itself to the panoramic photography that would best capture the location.

Design and Layout: JimenezBasic

COVER | THE WORLD TRANSFORMED: A Beautiful Change Coming

PHILIPPINE OPERATIONS

HEADLINE | PROGRESS ROOTED IN THE CENTER

There comes a time in every great organization’s history when challenges are encountered and in Splash Corporation’s case, used as a springboard towards incredible progress. In 2010, Philippine Operations charged through towards a new era of excellence and profitability fueled by sustainable innovation and strategic risk-taking, marks of an unmatched entrepreneurial spirit.

Splash Corporation is a Filipino corporation first and foremost so though expansion into  multiple foreign markets and into alternative modes of distribution are definite highlights, Philippine Operations remains the formidable driving force. In 2010, both tangible and intangible indicators have emphasized that Splash Corporation gained a status of maturity. With a certainty of vision, the Chairman has put together a team, outlined a strategy and executed it proclaiming a company that is flourishing from a year of challenges. The result,  Splash Corporation has written for itself an epic of transformation—one that is still unfolding.

With 2010 ushering a new government—one led by a beacon of a historical revolution—consumer confidence grew contributing to the growth of the personal industry. By aggressively promoting its core brands and unveiling numerous new brands, Splash Corporation maximized this unprecedented momentum. Distribution also grew from 13,000 to 22,000 stores in 2010. Enhancing the mix of products and their strategic availability resulted in a 3% increase of net revenues. This is only the beginning.

Founded upon a strong sense of discipline and aided by a sense of accountability, Philippine Operations has proven to be the steadfast player within the company ensuring that Splash Corporation stays a market leader in an industry teeming with new competition, especially since Splash Corporation transformed the personal care industry and its end-consumers. By making quality products accessible and affordable, consumer behavior was changed, expectations were raised. A true pioneer in the skin whitening industry, the Company secured the evolution of a niche category of 3 players to a broad-based category of 50 brands across different formats. The same goes for the exfoliant industry. Extraderm and Maxi-peel opened the mass consciousness to the benefits of regular exfoliation and in effect, cultivated extreme loyalty reflected in numerous personal endorsements. These lasting changes in personal care are borne of a keen appreciation of market intricacies and a boldness innate to the entrepreneur. Both traits testify to a prioritization of technological development. For example, it is cutting-edge advancements of the Splash Research Institute that make Vitresse Cuticle Coat, a hair product that provides consistent shine and manageability, unmatched by international and more expensive brands.

In addition, a mindfulness of processes and singularity in purpose have served to be fertile grounds for strategic and progressive ventures. The year 2010 was one that illustrated how a smart mix of the old and the new is sure to reap rewards. Namely in terms of management, the injection of fresh ideas and managing styles rejuvenated an existing enduring base of experience. With processes well-documented and a mission vision clearly declared, the new team was able to integrate into the community with ease without question on function. Along with a rejuvenated engagement with key suppliers, the foundation laid in 2010 resulted in a 25% jump of gross profits from 2009. But most importantly, this transformation was collaborative led by a Chairman whose trust in his people and their partners instilled a genuine sense of involvement.

Splash Corporation has always carved out its own market making the next years definitely ones to watch. Major thrusts in the new year include continued outlet expansion and the introduction of new products and brands including the premium Skin Medix line. With a major capital expenditure going towards the expansion and development of the plants and the supply chain division, a significant reduction of cost of goods sold is also expected. Philippine Operations confidently presses on its chosen path towards unprecedented progress.

TEAM: B+C Design

An institute with the food and beverage industry in mind run by the Pancake House Group with Far Eastern University.

The logo determined the tone and the design directions of the communication materials—a contemporary, geometric design rendered in bright colors.

HEADLINE: Make your move.
SUBHEADING: You brought the heat, now get into the kitchen and the dining hall!

BODY COPY:
Here’s the best thing to learn—your future really does begin with you. The spark of ambition, the flash of a dream. You are everything you need to succeed. The drive to evolve is right at your fingertips. Time to seize the day and get your hands dirty.

At the Institute of Culinary Arts and Food Service (ICF,) a passion for food and service fuels a dedication to excellence. We transform spirited and committed individuals into accomplished and professional chefs and food service practitioners through eclectic and hands-on learning experiences. This is our way of engaging with society—A Beter Kitchen, A Better World.

HEADLINE: Build it Up

SUBHEADING: Essentials of the Institute of Culinary Arts and Food Service

COPY: At the Institute of Culinary Arts and Food service, you live your education. It is not only learning how to put good food on the table but actively changing the world beyond the kitchen. What better way is there to touch people’s lives but through stomachs?

More photos of the brand materials, from Kara Bermejo

Listen: Johnoy and Kakoy, “Pagtatapat,” and “Will I Ever Waltz?”

(Click through to see pictures and listen to the songs reviewed.)

Perhaps because they came to me almost-bootleg, I initially viewed the songs of Kakoy & Johnoy (Johnoy & Kakoy) as objects of utter sincerity. This, after all, is how exactly love songs should be shared: either from that high school love who still thinks that mix tapes are cool, or, really, from a sibling gushing (like a head wound). You can approach this method of music acquisition in the same vein as the dying art of the love letter, or just holding someone’s hand without the fireworks, or the self-reflexive, ironic,wink-wink moment that most people think love is all about, or even grand cinematic spectacle (perhaps with the music swelling).

The jaunty strumming that introduces “Pagtatapat” tells you that you’re in for a good story. And it is one with which most people are familiar. The seemingly belated entry of the voice cues you into the excited and nervous energy that powers the song: yes, the persona is in love, madly in love, and he’s mustering up the courage (with each guitar strum) to finally say so. With the earnestness of an old black-and-white Mickey Mouse flick, the narrative portrays scene after scene of hesitation (“nagsasalita sa harap ng salamin”) and textbook juvenile anxiety (“natutunaw sa lagkit ng kanyang tinig”). And, along with these, the arrangement helps build the tension, slowly shifting from jangly ragtime rhythms to drawn-out notes and harmonies that sound as though pleading for love to be returned, and also syncopated by the clarinet’s distractions, as though the clarinet itself were overwhelmed by the possibilities of how it could just be so sweet.

In reality, however, it is not the actual revelation in the narrative that serves as the climax, when the music actually does swell; it is the pleading of the persona to be rid of misery (“Ayoko nang umasa pa./Kung ayaw mo sa akin,/sabihin mo na”). It is as if our ardent suitor sees the reality in front of him, and it is, sadly, not couple-dom. He then comforts himself with the thought of at least having professed love, over and over, knowing that perhaps only the gods’ favor will give him his heart’s desire. And then the voice gives way because only music could fill that uncertainty of waiting for someone to say yes.

I can only imagine how “Pagtatapat” would be performed in settings where it could be prefaced with the actual story, but without that, I’ll take my cues from the song and its vaudevillian shades. You can just hear the silent laugh track, because unrequited love is funny, sad, and unrelenting—at least until the giant hook pulls you off the rickety wooden stage.

Now, “Will I Ever Waltz” is from the same ilk, and it’s about how love changes in the rocky terrain of uncertainty now at the story’s denouement (do we not all have one love story after all?). This song is tinged with simple and poignant lyricism, and even lyric in the poetic sense, a plea to an unnamed you. It is wry without bearing the coarse irony that a lot of self-conscious indie musicians wield like baby balisongs.

Apart from the furtive plucking that informs much of the song, the easy label of “sentimental folksy ditty” is obliterated by the plainspoken nature of the song’s lyrics (as well as its certain and masterful turns of musical phrase.) Yes, it is lyric and heartbreakingly confessional but without annoying, cloying solipsism. You know that somehow, the voice (or the persona) is singing alone, working out in his head what comes next before he answers an inevitable question. There is an infinite stretch of time that comes before cleaving (yes, to cleave as both “to separate” and “to hold fast faithfully”), and when a song can give you that much space in your head, then you know it is utterance, a strong and honest utterance of such fragile uncertainty. The dramatic situation of a lover trying to discern uncertain fidelity or certain separation is told in recognizable clichés (this is a love song after all). But the surprising use of such idioms (“No comic relief in this novel romance”) gives you critical leeway, as great songs do, to say that this is your song as well as it is his.

Wishing that I had more language and sense to speak of the music so eloquently, all I can say is that the music itself is lyrical. It moves as certain and as uncertainly as the lyrics do—as if in disbelief to find that the notes that do come, fit with what came before it and what came before that. Because this is what great songs must do: give you a parenthesis of coherence in a time where incongruity is default. And when words give way to the unsayable? Yes, there are no words but lo, there is song.

Is it kosher to say that folk is graceful? Because that is exactly what it is. It is this same artful dissonance that resonates in the title—though the use of the word waltz may refer to the song’s structure—it is also a conjecture into the nature of love. Both songs are.

And until we all finally “secure this insecure love of yours” then by Bathala, there should be music. And please, please, please, God, let it be from them.

This introduction set the tone of two videos, biodiversity as an intimate connection to everything else in the universe and how sustainability is the only response to our survival.

TEAM: Marcus Phoenix Media Productions

Perhaps due to their advancing age when they finally told their story in public and part of an effort to reclaim a part of themselves, Lola is what the Philippine comfort women chose to refer to themselves. The Filipino word for grandmother, Lola bears with it many connotations—the nurturing aspect of a doting grandmother, a source of wisdom and stories, even a powerful matriarch. When put within the context of the comfort woman issue, the term takes an even more empowering aspect—each Lola telling her story of loss and violence becomes a community elder—a keeper of a special truth, one of survival and transcendence.

The term comfort woman is a translation of the Japanese euphemism, jugun ianfu[…]categorically refers to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sexual laborers for the Japanese troops before and during the Second World War. […]The estimate ranges between 80,000 and 200,000, about 80 % of whom, it is believed, were Korean. Japanese women and women of other occupied territories (such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and the Pacific islands) were also used as comfort women.

The comfort women were allegedly part of a system for the Japanese soldiers, to boost their morale in the provision of recreational sex. It was also believed to be a way of avoiding random acts of violence against women during wartime. Except current thinking has taken wartime rape, and other instances of violence against women and children a strategic tool of degradation. According to “Armies at War Use Rape as Weapon,” the invasion of women’s bodies is another consequence of the masculine privilege that extends from warfare, but instead of death, it leaves behind a permanent legacy of suffering and a sense of failure long after the battlefields have quieted.

This perspective of the violence against women during times of war was not prevalent when the Lola’s first went public in 1994, not even when the first Korean comfort women (Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan) came out and filed suit against the Japanese government in 1991. The reaction of the Japanese was to point to the 1965 treaty that expressed the country’s regret regarding aggression during the Second World War as a means of dismissing these women’s stories. Except it took the efforts of an article published in a Japanese major daily in 1992 for the Japanese to first apologize. When then Prime Minister Miyazawa KiichIapologized, the matter of compensation was left in the air for the sake of waiting for fact-finding committees to be set up in both Japan and Korea. Criticism was harsh even by the women journalists of Japan, seeing the “comfort system as a necessary evil to be adopted in war zone to avoid harm to local women.” The three reports (Japanese, South Korean and North Korean) were contradicting as the Japanese government’s reports did not include evidence that the women were coerced as was evident in the Korean Council’s two reports. Until the Japanese government admitted to the coercion in August 1993.

The issues of an apology, compensation and even the mere mention of this event in Japanese textbooks have been highly contested and unfortunately, still unresolved. Though the Japanese government has expressed remorse over the categorical wartime atrocities, the issue specific to the use of women in military camps has been more problematic. The Asia Women’s Fund was established in 1995 as a way to dispense monetary reparations yet many human rights and women’s groups have found this effort as suspect since it is not compounded by a categorical admission to such atrocities especially in Japan itself.

In 1992, Lola Rosa Henson, the first Filipina publicly recognized comfort woman, told her story leading 200 Filipino women to follow her example. She was a part of the class action suit against the Japanese government which demanded a formal apology, the inclusion of all the wartime atrocities in Japanese textbooks, and monetary reparations for the abuse. She details her experiences in her autobiography, Comfort Woman:Slave of Destiny, published in 1996.

Currently, there are many countries and organizations involved in the advocacy for the comfort women. As the tide of politics changes, and more women raise their voices for the Lola’s and other Comfort Women, there are still many stories to be told. World War 2 has been enveloped with a silence that has only recently been broken, with the veterans slowly dying out as well. And in the face of still so many wars, so much violence against women happening in the global community, it is apparent just how valuable these Lola’s are to cultural history. It is by no accident that the image of the storyteller is usually depicted as the old woman, the grandmother who has experienced everything. She is vital to the creation of a genuine national memory. One that transcends the impulse of quiet desperation, and becomes an active movement to stop these atrocities from ever happening again.

Chunghee Sarah Soh and Jerry D. Boucher, “The Comfort Woman Project,” 2001, 24 July 2009 <http://web.archive.org/web/20061209130115/http://online.sfsu.edu>.

National Organization for Women, “VIEWPOINT: Armies at War use Rape as Weapon,” Fall 1999, National NOW Times: Fall 1999, November 2005 <http://www.now.org/nnt/fall-99/viewpoint.html>.

The three reports are Results of Investigation into the Question of ‘Military Comfort Women’ Originating fro the Korean Peninsula (July 6, 1992), Interim Report of the Fact-Finding Investigation on Military Comfort Women under Japanese Imperialism (July 31, 1992, An Indictment: The Japanese Government Must Fully Establish the Truth on the ‘Military Comfort Women’ Question and Sincerely Apologize (September 1, 1992)

Celestina is the internationally-sold accessories line of Tina Maristela-Ocampo. It is the strong artisanal tradition and rare native materials that set them apart.

TEAM: B+C Design, Inc

Heavily inspired by the pieces and the vision the designer had for this season, the copy was borne of being Catholic and being Filipina—its easy juxtapositions and meaningful contradictions.

It reads:

The wishes of the faithful flicker like candles in the silence. There is soft light glinting off the luminous faces of the paua in the hands of the Filipina. The very fingers that smooth the fragrant rosary beads embroider intricate patterns on delicate piña. The thriving artisanal tradition and these life-affirming rituals deepen a rich cultural identity.

These aged walls tell stories of how it takes time to forge silver into exquisite strands. Light streams through windows and bounces off timeworn stone, gleaming like graceful mother-of-pearl. The contemporary is wed with tradition, the everyday suffused with the ethereal. Celestina lays bare the sacred in the beautiful.

TEAM: B+C Design, Inc

In the trend of Creative Communities, Bonifacio Global City is a mixed-use development targeting the new professional—someone whose passion suffuses both their work and their play. With this brochure, we emphasized a sense of OPEN-ness, both in the sense of space and most importantly, socially.

Here are some pages:

*actual photos are from Kara Bermejo.