“Design Staples” of the Sinulog
As with other festivals, there are several visual elements that’ve been banded with the Sinulog – designs that’ve largely contributed to the festival’s standing as the grandest festival of its class in the country. Here are quick takes on two of the festival’s mainstay “design staples” – the Sinulog Logo and Sinulog Typeface.
It was in 1980 when David Odilao Jr, who was then the Regional Director of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development, organized the first Sinulog parade.
The parade started from the Plaza Independencia, and was participated by seven schools and universities whose physical education teachers spearheaded renditions of a sinulog dance based on inputs from by Estelita “Titang” Diola and analysis of the dance steps performed by the “tig sinulog” candle sellers at the Basilica del Santo Niño.
The well-received run of the parade compelled then-Cebu City Mayor Florentino Solon into forming the Sinulog project committee which was helmed by the Cebu City Historical Committee under Kagawad Jesus Garcia Jr.
The committee mainly brainstormed on ways to make the festival a large-scale annual event, and one of its first initiatives was to come up with a logo. The logo was envisioned to serve as the identifier of the Sinulog, thereby serve as a symbol of its institutionalization.
The committee was not keen on using the image of the Santo Niño for the festival logo, but found a viable alternative in the Santo Niño’s coat of arms. The heraldry of the coat of arms of the Santo Nino bears a two-headed hawk, which was the mark of the House of Hapsburg (Hamburg) in Europe, which ruled most of the discovered world from the 15th to the 20th century.
Spain was under the Hapsburg domain when it sent expeditions across the world, and historians note that the two-headed hawk insignia was used in some of the banners of the ships of the Magellan Circumnavigation, as well as the vessels that were part of the Legazpi, Loaisa, Saavedra and Villalobos expeditions.
The two-headed hawk emblem was representative of the values of the House of Hapsburg to serve as “Champion of Catholicism and Defender of the Faith”.
The Sinulog logo, noted to have been interpreted by Olive Templa, was completed in having the coat of arms laid on a native warrior’s shield. An article published by the Sinulog Foundation Inc., characterizes the shield as symbolic of the Filipino’s “readiness to defend the country from all forms of foreign incursion and to resist any move that may endanger the country's self-determination,” with the Santo Niño’s coat of arms being symbolic of “the country's acceptance of Christianity as European rulers brought it to the settlements in 1521”.
A rendering of the coat of arms of the Santo Niño de Cebu
The Sinulog Typeface
Often confused with the Sinulog Logo, the typeface used in countless Sinulog shirts, posters and festival collaterals has become an integral visual component of the festival, so much so that it rivals the popularity of the Sinulog logo.
Essentially glyph-based renderings of letters that form the word Sinulog, several artists and design firms have worked on developing downloadable vignettes of the font over the years.
A typeface developed by Cebubased branding agency Tribox Design named “Sulog” is largely accepted as the go-to font option used by designers, mostly owing to the research and effort that was put into its making.
In discussing how the typeface was developed, the firm notes that it took six months to create, that that the first thing that they did as they were making it was study Sinulog collaterals and materials that date to the 1980s.
They found that there was really no “standard font” used for the festival, and developed the “Sulog” font as one which can be used to standardize designs. The firm retained the wordmark structure of various Sinulog collaterals in the “Sulog” font, which has glyphs in upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols. The font also has special glyphs for the letters ‘g’ and ‘y’ with tails, upper and lowercase ‘ñ’ and the letter ‘o’.
The firm notes that it made the font “to honor our beloved Santo Niño” and as a way to “help strengthen the Sinulog campaign so that it is more enjoyable and full of life.”
It worked with several artists and photographers in developing the font, specially acknowledging Insights Cebu, Dreamyria, Stevensonnet Art, JEGI Design, and Amabelle Lorraine Piñon.
The firm is also responsible for developing different Filipino and Cebuano-culture-inclined fonts like “Gahig Dila”, “Kalayaan” and “Makata”, which was based on the typeface used in the “Doctrina Christiana” (the first book printed in the Philippines) and used in the film “Gomburza”.