“Mga Buháy na Apoy/Breath of Fire” is a play about the origin story of the Palawan indigenous community. The play won several awards including the 2015 Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature; Outstanding Original Script, and Best Actress in the 2016 Gawad Buhay Awards. Pawikan Press wanted a cover design that imbues mysticism with a touch of Palawan indigenous culture.

The design approach I’m leaning on is elegance with a minimalist aesthetic. In the initial batch of cover designs I presented, I used a combination of 1) fire/flame photos, based on their theatrical poster, 2) a geometrical sun illustration as the main design element. For the illustration, I used some indigenous weaving patterns as graphic elements and frames.

Pawikan Press opted for the minimalist design studies of geometrical sun illustration and asked me to rework on those on a black-colored background and use production still photos from the performance.

For the second batch, I presented six cover variations using different photos that I converted to black and white with various color combinations of the geometrical sun illustration.

For the final batch, the author asked Pawikan Press if I could design another cover option similar to his 2015 theatrical poster design. I came up with three: one with the author’s request and two options for consideration both using the main poster image with the geometrical sun illustration.

Pawikan Press and the author unanimously approved the cover with the geometrical sun illustration with the main image from the original poster as their top choice; I used a light color on the sun illustration and other graphic elements to contrast the black-colored background.

According to Pawikan Press, the author finds the final cover design resembles his tarot card, which I agree with.