the kultura

intro + purpose

Growing up as an immigrant, I’ve faced identity crises throughout my life and questioned my sense of belonging and cultural identity. I started The Kultura as a Substack and as my senior capstone project, with the means to explore my roots as a Filipino. But since, after many thoughtful reporting, research, and interviews with interesting Filipinos from various backgrounds, it’s evolved into a digital platform engaging in discourse and learning more about our identities as Filipinos in the global diaspora. To this day, I continue reporting, writing, and publishing essays, features, and news articles about history, politics, overseas current affairs, arts and entertainment, social trends, and spotlighting Filipino achievements and finding ways of telling stories and growing the community.

brand identity

The Kultura, in essence, is an incisive look into personal identity in the Filipino diaspora. Inspired by the people I spoke to in developing the newsletter, I sought to evoke a communal brand identity using the elements of Filipino culture. I designed the logo on Canva because of its vast range of Filipino-created and Filipino-inspired typeface that I thought evoked the Philippines.

My color palette was mud yellow, red, and blue - colors in the Filipino flag. Since the sun is commonly seen as the icon to represent the Philippines, I wanted to incorporate it as much as possible throughout the brand identity.

content

Substack is a trending and growing newsletter and subscription platform that allows writers to make money off their writing. I chose Substack because I liked how the content goes directly to subscriber’s emails and making my content seem exclusive. It’s also an easy way for readers to readily engage with what they read, which helps in one of the newsletter’s missions which is to cultivate a community.

The content itself focuses on a range of topics - from politics, identity, personal journeys, family, food, history and colonialism, people, and entertainment. I have interviewed a wide range of people, from Steven Raga (the first Filipino-American to become Assembly member in NYS politics), Dr. Joanne Rondilla, activist Emma Tang, and more. Read and subscribe to my newsletter here.

print

I applied for the Civic Engagement and Social Justive (CESJ) Mini Grant which are small funds awarded to projects that focus on social justice or civic engagement. I used the funds to do a print project and print a zine: with my budget, I hired a photographer to take photographs, an illustrator to design the cover, and printed several copies professionally.

Download PDF ^︎︎

Illustrated cover by Caitlin Du