Fresh out of high school, my friends and I co-founded an initiative called Hayag Pilipinas in July of 2020. We were inspired to do so because we witnessed how much our fellow Filipinos were struggling, especially with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, we established a platform that bridges impoverished Filipino communities and those who wish to help. Since then, we have raised PhP48,900+ to provide 27,800 sanitary napkins for the inmates of the Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong, Philippines. We have also raised PhP350,000+ to provide tablets to 100+ scholars who were previously unable to attend classes due to the transition to online learning. We also raised PhP1.5+ million to help rebuild the typhoon-stricken communities of Bicol after Typhoons Quinta, Rolly, and Ulysses.
My particular role in Hayag was as a designer, where I helped design 15+ publication materials posted on social media. Employing techniques for information design, it was an interesting challenge to frame loads of information in a way that both entices and educates. A design of mine that I'd like to feature is our initiative's logo. I went through many, many drafts and versions (as detailed below ;P) before we all agreed on the logo design we have now – a letter 'H' with a bridge in the middle. This design incorporates our goal of 'bridging communities' seamlessly with our initiative name. Additionally, the names of our individual projects – pula, lila, kahel – are all Filipino words of colors (red, violet, orange). To signal a change in our projects, we change the color of our logo along with the color schemes of the graphic posts on our social media.
Below are some of the other graphics I designed to be posted on our social media. You can see here our varying color schemes of red, violet, and orange, which each belong to their corresponding project. Our main platform of reach was on Instagram, so we often leveraged the story and carousel features of posts. We would try to catch the viewer's attention with a dynamic and bright cover photo, enticing them to scroll to the next slide, which contains a bigger bulk of the post's information.
And that concludes my work with Hayag Pilipinas! This project means a lot to me as it was the first time any of my graphic designs had a real, lasting impact on people's lives. With every efficiently-designed post, we attracted more people who wanted to help, thus raising more money for Filipinos in need.
If you'd like to see more, make sure to check out Hayag's website, Instagram, and Facebook.