Sometimes the most poignant of stories might be the most simple.
Our logo was created by Daniel Lazo and Gel Cortez one rainy afternoon at a Jamba Juice in early 2016. More so, Daniel sat and created, and Gel talked, offering the often understated but appreciated “moral support.” 😉
With rousing interest in our work, including increased requests to lead workshops in our community, we knew that developing our organizational identity would be integral to our continued growth.
By that point, our informal group had met a dozen times at various community spots, including folks’ office space, Panera Bread, and the like, around San Jose.
During these sessions, where streams of consciousness and ideas were flowing, we understood that our purpose and dedication of our time in those spaces were uplifted in two ways: Leadership in the Fil community and dialogue…open, unrestricted, and unabashed Dialogue. We shared values and raised our collective work in two additional areas: Education and Activism. Education, because we all recognize the invaluable gift that access to Education has given us, with respect to competing in a material world, but more specifically, herald Education in the sphere of Ethnic Studies, or understanding who we are and our community’s contributions to America’s tapestry. Activism, to not cancel out or admonish engaging in our country’s social spheres, but rather, to normalize and familiarize our members with electoral systems that we helped create, but are underrepresented in.
Our founding group of organizers: Daniel, James, Jay, Angelo, and Gel, #1., Didn’t want anyone to ever second-guess or question what “LEAD Filipino” was about and #2., Strongly believed in the transformative and evolutionary powers of “dialogue” in the context of understanding and learning about our stories, engaging in community work, and reaching new heights of elevated consciousness with others.
For these guiding reasons, and shared values, you’ll see that our logo is a dialogue bubble, meant to evoke expression, thoughts, ideas, feelings, attitudes and more.
LEAD Filipino, an acronym/initialism for Leadership, Education, Activism, and Dialogue is depicted front and center in the dialogue bubble to personify and verbalize “Leading Filipino!” while the three stars, representing the three largest islands in the Philippines – Luzon, Visaya, and Mindanao – serve as punctuations in our organization’s initialism. We intentionally omitted a fourth punctuation to leave the dialogue perpetually open (ooo aaah).
The eight rays represent the eight provinces of Luzon that were the first to strike against Spain, hence catalyzing the Philippines’ Revolution against a 300+ year regime. We recognize the notable leaders and martyrs that stood for Philippines sovereignty and self-determination from an oppressive force. These revolutionaries include Andres Bonifacio, Tandang Sora, Gabriela Silang, Dr. Jose Rizal, and Apolinario Mabini, to name only a few.
The color Yellow is intentionally accented in our logo, not least to punctuate the mark of the Filipino sun, but that the color signifies democracy, freedom, unity, and sovereignty. We lift these values in the name of our community and base building work in San Jose and across California.
Symbolism and semiotics are everything, and for these reasons, we share our poignantly simple story of the creation and intentions of our logo!
Sulong!
LEAD Filipino