Style combination · Pairs well

Baybayin Revival Graphics × Kamon

Set one baybayin character inside a kamon-style monochrome roundel with compass-drawn rings for a seal or mark, as Philippine cultural agencies already do; draw a new emblem rather than copying an agency's.

From the research on Baybayin Revival Graphics

Mix them and make something Baybayin Revival Graphics Kamon

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kamon, their arrangement from Kamon, the finish from Baybayin Revival Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Baybayin Revival Graphics Kamon (Japanese Family Crests)

Type from Baybayin Revival Graphics: Brush & pen calligraphy
Hand-lettering
Colour from Kamon: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Kamon: Pictogram
Emblems & badges
Composition from Kamon: Radial & concentric
Central symmetry
Surface from Baybayin Revival Graphics: Painterly brushwork
Flat

Kamon avoids painterly brushwork: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Baybayin Revival Graphics

Civic

Yatra One; Baybayin Revival Graphics used The woodblock letterforms of the Doctrina Christiana (Manila, 1593), the model most modern baybayin fonts follow and Noto Sans Tagalog (Google Noto, SIL Open Font License; the 2022 build covers the Unicode 14 additions ra U+170D and pamudpod U+1715), the safe choice for real Unicode text

Text · Kamon

Japan's family crests: small one-colour emblems that reduce a plant, animal, tool or pattern to a flat silhouette, mirrored or repeated around a centre, often ringed and drawn with compass and brush. Begun on Heian court carriages and spread to samurai and all of society, mon are usually inherited, granted or freely chosen rather than designed, varied in small codified ways for branch families, and placed in fixed positions on formal kimono, shop curtains, lacquer and banners. Covers the formal crest (jōmon), not the decorative coloured kaga-mon or pictorial date-mon and share-mon.

Shippori Mincho; Kamon used Kago-moji, the thick, squared Edo lettering often reversed out in white, for names set beside a crest and Brush-written kaisho (regular-script) kanji for shop names and family names on curtains and lanterns

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Kamon, with a counter-accent from Baybayin Revival Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Baybayin Revival Graphics Kamon (Japanese Family Crests)

#f3efe6 ground · 36%
#121212 ink · 14%
#b38f3d accent · 18%
#ce1126 accent · 14%
#8c2d25 accent · 10%
#0038a8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe6;
  --ink: #121212;
  --accent-1: #b38f3d;
  --accent-2: #ce1126;
  --accent-3: #8c2d25;
  --accent-4: #0038a8;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Baybayin Revival Graphics: Baybayin is shared heritage, but its revival touches living Indigenous scripts and contested claims. Hanunóo, Buhid and Tagbanwa are still written by their communities, the Mangyan of Mindoro and the Tagbanwa and Pala'wan of Palawan, and their documents are on UNESCO's Memory of the World register (1999, 'Philippine Paleographs'); do not use their letters, ambahan verses or community signage as generic 'baybayin', and work with the communities and bodies such as the Mangyan Heritage Center when their scripts are involved. Baybayin wrote Tagalog and neighbouring lowland languages, and Kapampangan Kulitan has its own form and keepers, so do not present baybayin as the old writing of every Filipino people; even the bills moved in 2022 from a baybayin-only national script to baybayin 'and other indigenous and traditional writing systems'. 'Alibata', coined by Paul Versoza in 1914 from the Arabic alif-ba-ta, is a misnomer. Have every word spelled by a reader of the script: it writes syllables, so English spelled letter by letter, wrong or missing kudlit, mirrored glyphs and invented letters read as nonsense, and a tattoo makes the error permanent; write personal and organisation names in Latin unless the bearer has chosen a baybayin spelling. Image models cannot write baybayin and invent glyphs: leave the sign blank or set real text in a Unicode font (one that covers ra and the pamudpod, with the text entered as Unicode, not typed on Latin keys mapped to glyphs), and never present generated pseudo-script as genuine. Some of the best-known baybayin emblems carry politics: the CCP's triple ka is, in the Inquirer's words, a remnant of the Marcos New Society, and the ka in a rayed sun, attributed to the Katipunan, was flown by the July 2003 mutineers the press called the Magdalo Group and is the logo of the Magdalo party-list; do not use them as neutral Filipino marks. Agency seals, state insignia and the peso notes are official marks, so draw new emblems instead of copying them. Baybayin tattoos sit beside batok, the Indigenous hand-tapped tattooing whose patterns, placements and rituals belong to particular ethnolinguistic groups and their practitioners: a baybayin word does not license batok patterns or hand-tapping outside those lineages, and invented tribal motifs must not pass as Indigenous designs. Credit or commission Filipino calligraphers, type designers and tattoo artists.

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Mon are inherited marks of particular families, shrines, temples and institutions. Only the imperial chrysanthemum is named in Japanese law: the Trademark Act (art. 4(1)(i)) bars registering it or anything like it. The government's paulownia, though the official emblem of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, was never given the same legal restrictions, while famous crests registered as trademarks, such as Mitsubishi's three diamonds, are protected as marks. Do not use the chrysanthemum, the government paulownia, or any identifiable family's, shrine's or temple's crest as decoration or as a brand. Imperial emblems can also recall Japan's wartime empire for audiences in Korea and China. The manji (卍), a standard crest (the Hachisuka clan; the temple crest of Sensō-ji), is read in the West as the Nazi swastika: avoid it outside a Japanese context that explains it. Draw new crests by the tradition's rules instead of borrowing real ones, and commission or credit working monsho uwaeshi, who still draw and paint crests by hand.