Recently, Threadless held a Design Challenge known as “Threadless Loves Your City” and, considering some free time available, I opted to take the opportunity to sharpen up some tshirt design concept featuring what’s known as the Happiest City of the Philippines – Bacolod City.
With Bacolod City in mind, nothing else would be more known about it than its Mardi Gras like festival known as the Masskara Festival, which comes by annually every October.
Featured mainly in the artwork is an Ilonggo wearing a festive mask. I’m not used to mixing so many colors that much but I must say I’m happy how this turned out to be. The mask features are original and I drew inspiration from the many photos I found online.
A carabao is a hardworking animal that fairly represents the nature of life in our society. Nevertheless, a happy mask is put on. And hey, he plays the drums.
Three stars and a sun – a common symbolism that instantly puts a recall back to the Philippine flag.
And when we say Bacolod, one great thing about this place is the love for food. Foodtrip! Piyaya and Barquillos are my favorites from this place. Though I must admit the sapin-sapin and puto aren’t native to Bacolod but thought it’d be nice to feature.
More smiles in every little way.
As much as possible, I tried to deviate away from looking ‘too Filipino’ and be more universal. By that, I mean people who look at the artwork need not be from the country to appreciate it. Rather, have anybody enticed to know what this is about without any clue that the three stars and the sun or that the color of the guy’s top clothing mainly represented the Philippines.
It’s more of a ‘WTF is that colorful artwork’ that I am aiming for and hopefully entail a curiosity of what the City of Smiles is all about, why is everything smiling, why are there masks features, which further points to a simple way of helping out the tourism for the Masskara Festival.
The shirt is mainly featured in white but it was made in such a way to accommodate being printed on different colors via negative spaces.
