The Design Notebook

Every engineer says they “have an eye for design.” This notebook is the receipts. Before and alongside the products in the other chapters, I worked as a commissioned designer — a concert's entire merch line, apparel, phone wallpapers, a department flaglet, an animated ad — real clients, real print runs, real deadlines.

None of it is UI, and that's the point. Hierarchy, typography, color systems, and restraint were trained here — on things people wore, clipped, hung, and held — and then carried into every interface in this portfolio.

On April 13, 2024, Whee In of MAMAMOO played BEYOND: Manila. I illustrated and designed the fan-merch line for the show — every physical piece a fan clipped to a bag, wore around their neck, or took home. The rule I set early: one visual system — a turquoise doodle pattern, a hand-lettered logotype, orange accent strokes — that had to survive five different print formats without falling apart.

The straps are the stress test. A keystrap runs about 13:1, a lanyard closer to 36:1 — ratios where most identities dissolve into a smear of color. The system holds because it was built from repeatable parts: the doodle pattern fills any length, and the logotype repeats like a heartbeat down the strap.

Apparel teaches a different discipline: silkscreen budgets, ink counts, and placement rules. Two briefs, opposite directions. STEM 12-1 at Congressional Integrated High School wanted a graduating-batch shirt that felt like streetwear — so the back panel is a single-ink acid-graphic collage: a wireframe globe, a DNA helix, an atom marking '23, and an impossible staircase for four years of climbing. Fluor, a Fortune 500 engineering firm's local team, needed the opposite: knowing when to stop. A wordmark on the back yoke, a badge on the chest, nothing else.

Commissioned lock-screen wallpapers that carry a university student's full weekly schedule — a legibility problem disguised as a decoration problem. The computer-science student got black-on-black: chrome outline type, calculus scribbles, halftone swirls, with the timetable pulled back into crisp white. The pharmacy student got cream paper, baby-blue sticker type, and a photo strip. Same information architecture underneath — day rails, time blocks, a subject legend — two completely different skins.

For the BSN 1-1 nursing section at Cavite State University: a pennant flaglet built around their eagle. The wordmark carries an EKG heartbeat carved through the letterforms, claw slashes tear through the blue field, and an oversized ghost monogram fills the triangle so the flag reads at distance as well as in hand.

Back in 2021, the most popular K-pop sticker seller in the Philippines needed a shop-open ad for Facebook and Instagram. I animated their hand-drawn mascot into a 30-second spot — linework drawing itself in, sticker characters peeking into frame, ending on the shop card. Motion stuck: it later became a paid craft, cutting 10+ short-form reels a month for Team Fridays Marketplace with a 40% lift in post engagement.

Motion also works at the identity level. This ROMA logo sting builds the monogram bar by bar — each shape sliding into place with its own shadow — before the wordmark stamps in. Twenty seconds of animation that makes a static mark feel engineered.

Every dashboard and app in the earlier chapters looks the way it does because of this work. Print teaches you hierarchy, because nobody scrolls a lanyard. Merch teaches you systems, because one artwork has to survive five formats. Commissions teach you restraint, because the client's message outranks your decoration. That's the eye I bring to UI and UX — trained on paper, fabric, and film before it ever touched a screen.