C A N VA S
How did you get started in the design industry?
Two of my friends—John Lucas Reyes (Riverspoons Studio)
and Nicc Balde—helped paved my way to the design industry.
I was in my third or fourth year in college at the UP Fine
Arts; it was a good time for graphic designers/web designers
in the Philippines. Inksurge (founded by Rex Advincula and
Joyce Tai) had halfproject.com, which was one of the most
popular design portals back then. Nicc, John and his brother
were also pretty active in the web design community. Sobrang
nagkaroon ng interest. So nag-web design ako and posted
stuff online. I never got any professional work out of it, but I
was becoming more active in the online design scene. After
university I went into advertising. I was there for three years.
After no’n, I left and started my first design studio. When I
was in advertising as an art director, I decided that I liked
more of design work than advertising.
How did Plus63 begin? What was your objective for
setting it up?
After advertising, I set up a design studio focused on
non-profit. My partners and I wanted to do design for social
causes and non-profits. We were doing it for five years before
going our separate ways. It was then that I started with Plus63
with Berns and Rhea. When we were doing it for five years,
I noticed that even though we were designing brochures and
logos, we didn't make much effect on the actual project. We
didn't have that much input. My dream at a time was to create
a critically-acclaimed design studio that could make a bigger
influence on a project. We wanted to be more involved in the
efforts and, of course with other design work too, even the
commercial ones.
What inspired the creation of Hydra?
That's a funny story. I can't remember how long ago,
but I thought “Uy! Parang magandang April fools’ joke na
yung mga design studios sama-sama into one complete
collective. Picture tayo, gawa ng fake website.” (“Hey!
How about, for April fool's, let's have all the design studios
come into one complete collective. Let's take a picture and
make a fake website.”) But it didn't materialize straight
away. One day, Mara Coson shared that there was a space
here at Karrivin and she was figuring out her tenant mix.
Below: Telescope for Google, 2014
Bottom: Google Doodle Philippine Independence Day, 2017
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