A group of luminaries in the Philippine design industry banded together to form the Communication Design Association of the Philippines (CDAP), which aims to promote Filipino talent in the field at home and abroad.
The CDAP is composed of and founded by President Jowee Alviar, Co-founder/Creative Director, TeamManila; Vice-President Dan Matutina, Designer, Co-founder, Plus63 Design Co.; Secretary Angel Guerrero, Founder & President, adobo magazine, the word on creativity; Treasurer Brian Tenorio, Founder and Chair/CEO, Brian Tenorio & Co.; Director AJ Dimarucot, Designer, Owner, Love & Madness Clothing Corp.; and Director Robert Alejandro, Artist, Designer, RAA Art & Design, Papemelroti.
With the mission of elevating the Communications Design industry in the Philippines for national progress and development, CDAP will work to develop designers and communities, to rediscover Filipino design culture and heritage, and to bring Philippine design to the world and the world of design to the country.
“The mission of CDAP is to develop communication design for the creative industry and also to develop the sector as an economic contributor and social development contributor to the country,” said Jowee Alviar, President. “We see our sector as a growing economy and we want to nurture and develop it,” he added.
According to AJ Dimarucot, CDAP Board Director, the founders have been discussing the conception of the organization for several years now. “We’ve always had this mission of promoting our sector and visual design for communication in our on ways and eventually, this year, we really pooled our resources, gave time and effort to really put up an association,” he expressed. “Everybody’s moving towards to really looking at the creative sector. It is a good time that we launched CDAP,” Dimarucot added.
Dimarucot also created the organization’s logo and branding by integrating both modern and traditional design. “We wanted to bring together the rich tradition of design in the Philippines. The pre-Filipino (era) has a rich culture of traditional design, and it shows in our weaves, in our fabrics. We wanted to marry that with the modern design as we know it now, so as you’ll see the logo mark is based on the traditional weaves that we see in banigs or fabrics. We wanted to take that and use the idea of pixels to form those weaves,” he explained.
For now, according to Alviar, the organization is focusing on community-building and inviting creatives, design professionals, and even independent designers to join CDAP.
To learn more about CDAP and to reach out to the organization, interested individuals and groups may visit the website at http://cdap.com.ph/ and https://www.facebook.com/CDAPdesign/ on Facebook.
