MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Art, like sports, is highly instrumental in engaging the youth.
To amp up its promotion of sports as an integral part of a child’s holistic development, the Department of Education and chocolate milk brand MILO (which has created a brand that’s strongly associate to youth sports) inaugurated its nationwide inter-sport and inter-school virtual competition, the “MILO-DepEd Palarong Pambahay.”
Launched last May, the event provided a platform for young athletes to showcase their talents and continue their champion journeys in school and in sports amid the challenges brought by the pandemic.
What caught the eyes of the Filipino youth were the lively illustrations of young athletes in their winning form, which featured locally beloved sports, and represented thousands of student-athletes nationwide.
Behind these works is an illustrator and creative professional named Trisha Salonga — and adobo Magazine sat down with them to get to know how these illustrations came to fruition.
From the drawing board to the digital stadium
The collaboration with MILO came to life when Trisha was a part of the MILO creative team in Ogilvy Philippines as its Senior Art Director.
“After hearing the brief, I had two approaches in mind, one that is the usual — images of kids using stock against limbo, for stronger MILO branding — or I could illustrate new characters for MILO. I love illustrating that’s why I didn’t mind the extra hours for finishing this,” Trisha answered.
Leveraging MILO’s objective on elevating the scale of Palarong Pambahay and communicating the campaign as a nationwide event, Trisha and her team came up with the idea of creating illustrations that align with the campaign’s vision.
“To really sell this (illustrated work) route, my copy partner, Aimee Espiritu, wrote in the design rationale: ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ Well, in this case, necessity gave birth to illustration. Searching for very specific images can be quite a daunting task. So this then inspired us to come up with a specially-drawn visual that wishes to capture the energy, excitement, and sports excellence embodied by the young athletes who will join this year’s Palarong Pambahay. We thought that this treatment can connect very well with kids who are also much into anime or manga nowadays,” Trisha continued.
To visually communicate that it’s countrywide, they used the flag colors in the layout and players’ attire. To help create a focal point, they enclosed each champion in a stylized zoom window with a subtle hint of home in the background to clearly set the arena of this year’s sports competition.
The campaign saw over 700 participating schools and featured over 2,000 aspiring student-athletes who showcased their skills and competed with pride for themselves and their school in front of 1.5 million online viewers.
“Overall, I really enjoyed it, I stayed up late for a couple of nights to refine the characters but I really had fun with this project; especially when I finally saw the launch, a few months later,” she concluded.
Trisha imparts some advice for creatives who would want to work with brands like MILO:
“Always prepare a rationale that will convince clients! I think it also boils down to storytelling. Propose something that can be cascade-able or marketable, and do a lot of research. Find what has been done before, or what has worked — and propose something that is yours, and at the same time something that will give impact to the brand. Most of all, propose something that you love.”
Wrong spelling of the artist name