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Bastos Lab

@_bastos.lab

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degenerate pilipino/x designers

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moving onto the groundwork. sign-ups are closed, but not forever! (if you are still interested, please send us a DM)

graphic by Bastos Lab member @noisekiill by @_bastos.lab

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8 months ago

our discussions are opening a can of worms i fear by @_bastos.lab

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9 months ago

who's on the dean's list 👀
graphic by bastos lab member @tabuugabbu

f*ck 🧊 by @_bastos.lab

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9 months ago

Bastos Lab is still here! (Happy 2026!) Apologies for the radio silence. We are entering an introspection phase and exploring our in betweenness. Resurfacing this old post by @grandfather.studio as a trigger point for this exploration and passionate research of identity (an ongoing practice). We'll pop in with some posts every once in a while, but for now, it's all internal work 😉

See you all, not so soon! by @_bastos.lab

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9 months ago

DEBUT_1989_DATAMOSH.toe / created an audio reactive datamoshing piece in touchdesigner using an old vhs video from a family member’s debut in 1989, a filipino tradition that celebrates a young woman’s 18th birthday with an extravagant party and dancing /

my family was so young here. it’s reassuring to have a piece of them in an .mp4 on my laptop. i’ll take good care of it!

i grabbed this video off facebook from one of my family member’s pages haha…i hope they don’t mind…salamat!!! 🙏🏼

shoutout to my professor armon for teaching me how to make this! so grateful @entroplay

[original file analyzed the audio of just gettin’ hot by pura pura — had to use a different audio for copyright reasons]

#touchdesigner #datamoshing by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

The Flavors of Negros
18x24 Poster
design and words by Mo Jardinico @moja.files

~~~

To fully experience Filipino cuisine, it cannot simply be eaten; you must engage with its memory. What lingers are the flavors of home.

My interpretation of Walay Tugpahay (“no slowing down”) draws inspiration from menus in Filipino restaurants across both the US and the Philippines. I’ve always admired their orderly chaos, a kind of playful rhythm that rejects minimalism, whether through straying from the grid, cheeky typography choices, or photos captured on a simple smartphone. I wanted to honor these principles of Filipino maximalism—an antithesis of Western design. Outer glows, harsh drop shadows, stroke-outlined text, and even Photoshop’s pre-installed shapes felt distinctly *Filipino*. So too did default fonts like Impact, Times New Roman, and Arial, warped into random shapes and half arches. The everyday Filipino type embraces this resourcefulness, a makeshift quality like the cluttered menus found at a family-owned all-you-can-eat buffet. These designs are full of character, texture, and rich with our distinctive visual language.

While dishes like adobo, sinigang, lechon kawali, and kare-kare tend to receive attention for their palatability outside the Philippines, our food is no monolith. Like our people, it is expansive and diverse across the archipelago. For this project, I turned to the regional dishes of my province, Negros Occidental, which felt most fitting to highlight. The most notable being sweet desserts like Piaya, muscovado-filled unleavened flat bread, or Negrense staple chicken inasal. These foods are not novelties to be exoticized; they are the fabric of my ancestors and ancestors before them. In the words of Doreen G. Fernandez, “Negros food comes from its past, and is part of the pride with which Negrenses build their future. It is part of the culture. Matamis, manamit gid ang amon kultura! (Sweet, truly delicious is our culture!)” by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

RESIST! REST! RAGE!
18x24 Poster
design and words by Margo Dela Cruz (she/they) @noisekiill

~~~
Born in a capitalist, imperialist country as a second-generation Filipino-American, I struggled with disconnection from my heritage. Struggle with language barriers, Americanization, feeling like an inauthentic Filipino. I wanted to express the turbulence and catharsis of piecing together my fragmented identity. Filipino master painter Ricarte Puruganan “wanted to challenge Filipino artists of today to pick up from our indigenous patterns and symbols for us to be able to trace the roots of the characters of the Filipinos” in order to make contemporary art that is undeniably, unapologetically FILIPINO. Stumbling across a copy from 1975 of Traditional Handicraft Art of the Philippines by Robert de los Reyes in a small bookstore in New York City sparked the catalyst to learn more about an art form that is gradually phasing out of existence due to Western cultural imperialism

The motifs found in handicrafts and textiles are put in a colloquial context, connecting my interpretations with my individualized experiences as a graphic designer who is active in the local art scene. The dancing men, joined together hand in hand, symbolize a village, my desperate need for community. The binitoon, a geometric star comprised of alternate colored squares, is transformed into a transparent PNG pattern, peeling back the layers of an “onion skin” in an Adobe Photoshop manner. The gray and white pixels eat away at the tapestry. I want to decolonize my mind, unlearn the harmful beliefs that were imposed on me. My cry for radical change.

The words Walay Tugpahay, digitally cross stitched—using a post-binary typeface called Crozet·t by queer type collective Bye Bye Binary—firmly grounds the piece. Despite the digital decay shredding the tapestry into threads, the dancers chant “We will resist! We will rest! We will rage!” by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

We’re so excited to share that Bastos Lab is participating alongside many talented filipinx makers at the Cebu Art Book Fair Poster Exhibition @cebuabf 5:00pm PHT!

This year’s theme is Walay Tugpahay, a Cebuano phrase meaning “no slowing down.” Stay tuned to learn more about each poster :-) by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

tomorrow July 19th is our first official virtual meet on zoom
↳ 11:00am-12:30pm PST

if you or someone you know 👀 is interested, DM or email us! we’ll be checking for last minute signups an hour before <3

excited to meet y’all soon! by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

we’re having our first meeting! it will be in-person/virtual so open to folks outside of LA. sign up link can be found in our bio ~ more location details/info will be sent via email.

→ hope to see you there :) by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago

we're building community. come join us! (we meet in person monthly)

we are filipinx graphic designers living and working in the land taken care of and inhabited by the tongva, tataviam, serrano, kizh, and chumash peoples [los angeles]. we aim to foster a non-competitive environment by practicing and prioritizing collective care and support through camaraderie, friendship-building, collaboration, resource-sharing, and accountability-holding.

we are not a career networking org. we are a space for fruitful conversations—to share experiences, frustrations and challenges, achievements and triumphs unique to our identity, as well as to share personal and community projects and ideas.

we do not adhere to western canon. we decenter western universal concepts and critique. we see it as just another tool. we follow decolonial and universal teachings led by indigenous, black, and latinx figures.

we lean left. we are proudly anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist, anti-apartheid, anti-police, anti-capitalist, and anti-queer/homo/bi/transphobia.

sign up link in bio 🔗 taken in Los Angeles, California by @_bastos.lab

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a year ago