Why don t we talk a little bit about how this extracurricular project came to your attention? I first heard about it from Professors C.J. Yeh and Suzanne Anoushian. They both teach in the Communication Design Department. We received a brief statement about what the Diversity Council is, and the basic requirements of the project, or competition, which was to develop a visual identity for the council in the form of a new logo. Did it strike you right away as something you d be interested in? Yeah. When I was in high school I was a part of the multicultural club... Where did you go to high school? I went to Central Islip High School in Long Island. And did you have a very diverse student population? Yes. That s what Central Islip was known for. It s surrounded by other towns that weren t as diverse as ours. It was like I always believed that was an advantage, a different perspective on growing up. Can you describe the diversity at Central Islip? There were all different cultures. A lot of students were similar to me first generation born in the United States. A majority were from Latin America and a small population from Asia and the Middle East. Were there African American students also?
Yes. They and the people of Hispanic culture were the majority of our school. And what did you do for the club in high school? At first I started as a member. Then I became secretary and then president. We organized events that brought together all the different cultures of the school, with activities like food events and family nights. What semester are you in now at FIT? I m currently in my 7 th semester. And your BFA will be in what? Graphic design. So you re a graphic design major, not a communication design major? The first two years is communication design and from there you can choose to go into advertising, packaging or graphic design. When CJ and Suzanne gave you the description of the project, what attracted you to it? Was it the connection that you made to your high school and the cultural club? That, and also having a chance to develop the look and feel that was something close to me. What do you see as the importance of the council, from a student s point of view? We have members from the entire community professors, students, administrators, staff, and security. Why would you think such a council would be important? FIT is a diverse campus, but I feel sometimes because we re so tight with our majors,
we tend to just stick to who we know and who we re comfortable around. My hope with the Diversity Council is that it will allow all different majors to have a chance to get to know more not just about different cultures, but also different majors. It s interesting that you should say that because just recently, there has been the establishment of the FIT student Diversity Club, which was something we never had before. It is a group of students who aren t necessarily in the same major but who come together to learn about each other s back grounds and cultures. Can you tell me a little bit about your own cultural background; your own family? My family is from the Philippines, and my cousin, sister, and I were the first generation to grow up and be born here. A big part of our culture is our family. When I was little they always tried to incorporate the Filipino culture and American culture in our upbringing. It was sort of an equal balance between the two. What was your common language inside the home? It s funny because I really don t know. They spoke a lot of the Filipino language Tagalog. So I understand everything that they say, but I can t speak it fluently. I was also born in the States. My mom and dad were born in America, but my grandparents were from Italy. When I was a kid, my parents never spoke Italian in the house, but when we visited our grandparents they used Italian as a secret language, so that the kids never knew what they were saying when they needed to talk adult talk. You were very lucky because you were hearing the Tagalog every day and were able to learn to understand it an early age. Do you still have family in the Philippines? There s a few relatives on my mom s side, but the majority moved either to Canada or to the States. Do you have a desire to visit the Philippines? Maybe after I graduate. I don t know. I was thinking of having a chance to work there in a graphic design studio maybe. Not for commercial use, but to raise awareness of a lot of the poverty that surrounds the country.
So you re very aware of the history of the Philippines? Yeah. Recently the tropical storms have hit there, which was really unfortunate. Just maybe to find a way to help through designing or raising awareness in the United States to help over there. It s nice for us to use the talents that we ve worked so hard at developing to help others. Let s talk a little bit now about the actual design of the logo. What did you do first? The first thing I did was read the information I received which listed the mission statement and the main goals of the Diversity Council. I tried to break it down into categories, like unity and balance within the FIT campus. I took those key words and researched a bit on the symbolism and what images would represent those words. I went on Google and researched, for example, community symbolism. What did you find? I found images of beehives. Beehives. How interesting. After seeing the beehives I focused in on the shapes that formed them, which were hexagons. That s when I went into the symbolism of the numbers. If I can interrupt for a bit. When you went into the symbolism with the numbers, were you still working on the word community or had you moved on to another word? You were still with community? Yeah. I was still with community. So then you researched numbers related to community?
Yeah. What did you come up with? Well, for the community, I found the beehives and hexagon. So then I focused on the number six the number of sides of a hexagon. Various websites said it represented community and balance. I think they said it represented balance because the hexagon has equal sides and angles all around. Where did that take you? After that I went back to the statement, to the roles of the Diversity Council. I saw that there were three listed. When I saw that I figured I could use three hexagons together. Okay so you saw, you went back to the mission statement and saw three bullet points? Yeah. Where did that lead you? From there I was still focusing on numbers and seeing what they represented. I researched the number three and found out that it represents unity and balance. Although it s an odd number it attracts people because something about it seems even, like equilateral triangles. So that tied you to the three bullet points? Yeah. Then you decided to superimpose the hexagons?
I started to play around with the form of three hexagons. I asked myself what would represent those three words of community, unity and balance, so I overlapped them. In doing that, it communicated the idea of being together, being separate pieces but also forming one piece. That s a very nice concept. The overlapping of the hexagons, for you showed separateness separate identities, and yet coming together? Yeah. Can you describe the middle stages and the end product of your project? The middle stages were pages of logo sketches, different placements of the text that goes with the mark. I went through different fonts seeing which worked best and conveyed the feeling of the Diversity Council best. You studied fonts to see which conveyed what? Unity? Yes I wanted to give a strong foundation for the unity, bold enough to catch people s attention. But not so bold as to scare someone off; something very accessible. What font did you end up with? It s called Trade Gothic. Did you have to make any modifications on it? I made a few modifications. What we usually do is we take it into a program called Illustrator. It converts the text into points. Those points you can drag or delete; that way you can modify it the way you like. What kind of dragging and deleting did you do?
I opened up some of the letter forms. They had smaller counters, as they re called, which are like, say the R, the inside oval. So what I did was make it smaller or bigger depending on how it felt with the rest of the letters. Sort of to make it more balanced. What were the finishing stages? Experimenting with color and also the type. I focused a lot on the type. The space between the letters wasn t equal optically. It didn t have to be perfect on the computer, but just so that it seemed equal to the human eye between each letter. How about the color? I wanted to have a bright color that wouldn t throw people off for example, a bright pink as opposed to a bright orange. It s a little more dulled down. The orange, you mean? I wanted the orange to start off dark and go into a lighter, a lighter tone of the color. That s why in the color versions of the logo there s a slight gradient within the mark. It started off as there were four different versions, but one was dark. There was a grey scale version and then four different colors ones, but I m not sure which color ones the committee chose. I think someone had mentioned it could change with the type of diversity event being advertised. And all the versions are beautiful,. Congratulations on having your design chosen as the new logo for the FIT Diversity Council. Do you have anything you want to share with FIT campus, with your fellow students or with the campus in general? You mentioned the student Diversity Club. I think students should take the opportunity to branch out of their comfort zones and learn about other people they wouldn t normally see or talk to on campus, because we re so boxed into our own majors. We can all learn so much from each other.