Stephanie Santos

A Filipino display typeface inspired by Manila Sound and Filipino cultural heritage.

Manila Sound Type is a practice-led design project that emerges from my experience as a Kiwi-Filipino seeking to reconnect with my cultural roots through design. Growing up between Aotearoa and the Philippines, I often felt caught between two worlds, distant from the place my family called home. Music, particularly Manila Sound, a 1970s Filipino music genre blending folk, rock, funk and disco with playful Taglish lyrics, became my bridge back. More than a nostalgic soundtrack, it captured Filipino humour, hybridity, and the rhythm of everyday life.

This project asks: How can designing a Manila Sound-inspired typeface help Kiwi Filipinos reconnect with their heritage and cultivate cultural nostalgia, pride, and belonging?

Through a practice-led and autoethnographic approach, I translate the warmth, playfulness, and optimism of Manila Sound into a contemporary display typeface and reflective publication. The process involved studying the genre’s album covers, song lyrics, and visual motifs to translate sound into rhythm, shape and colour within the letterforms.

Manila Sound Type explores how design can hold memory and foster belonging within diasporic contexts. Each design decision, from expressive curves to vibrant palettes, is rooted in both personal and shared Filipino experience. By turning music into a visual language that evokes pride and cultural connection. The outcome is more than a typeface; it is a visual bridge between two homes, a love letter to heritage, and a celebration of how culture continues to evolve, travel, and thrive wherever we are.