As a medium, Illustration offers a wide range of opportunities to create. Once a designer learns this, the potential and possibilities of forms and dimensions open up to them and their work. Making illustrations on objects has been a technical feat for me, and an exercise in working towards an even larger kind of vision.
Creating Products
Fans (2024, 2025) • Home Wallpaper
This possibility opened up to me when I created The Fans (2024), a project that uses the paper fan as a template for a zine that showcases a ballroom of characters of my design. This project started as a general interest in Filipino historical dress, with a particular focus on the Filipino Terno/Barong.
My interest led me to looking into readings and research about this artificial. In particular, Clothing the Colony by Stephanie Cu and Fashionable Filipinas: An Evolution of the Philippine National Dress in Photographs by Gino Gonzales and Mark Lewis Higgins were my main points of reference and inspiration.
This was my basis for a lot of my choices, but historical accuracy was not my goal. Instead, I wanted to imagine a fantastical version of the terno. Mainly inspired by the grandiose and curvilinear style of Alphonse Mucha, I created 5 different themes: the sea, astrology, romance, rococo, and butterflies. To add to the scene, I’ve posed them in ways that feel as if they exist in the ballroom together, dancing the carinosa.
Paper Fans (2024)
Visual Research, Illustration, Product Development
Acrylic Fans (2025)
In collaboration with Deka Studios
Illustration, Product Development
Revisiting this project in 2025, I wanted to create a version with a more modern take on the fan; more a technical feat than a project in research. In this one, we incorporated new materials and techniques–like laser cut acrylic. The fan features a new illustration on the main body, and the spokes of the fan have been changed to black acrylic, a sleeker and more sturdy material. The second iteration of the fan is meant to be about a more modern fantasy, and the acrylic helped in evolving that modern aspect into something more defined.
Given that this new version is a whole new plan made from scratch, I worked in partnership with Deka Studios to do a lot of prototyping. We had to plan out the exact measurements of the folds, the spoke height, and the design composition, in order to make it all fit together. The new illustrations also added to this modern fantasy, depicting a more exciting ballroom, with overflowing champagne and energised dancing. With this design, there was no specified and researched reference, only inspired by the timelessness of a great party.
Home Wallpaper for Pierra
Illustrations
