I recently had the privilege to create the collaterals for a local trail run. I was pretty nervous about the project as I have never designed something that was in line with my hobbies AND with such a big scope. But thankfully, I was able to pull it off and I can say it was a success.
The Project
Run 2 Me is an annual race held by Sir Lao Ogerio, a decorated ultra-runner. He has won various ultramarathons like the Cebu Northwest 100 miles Ultramarathon, the Great Metro Manila 100 mile Endurance Race, and most recently, the Laguna Loop Endurance Run 2018 where he ran 215 kilometers around Laguna bay. This trail race is held in Wawa, Rizal during early September every year, near his birthday. This year is going to be the 3rd edition.
I was approached by Jose, admin of the Pinoy Trails community and also a fellow runner and race photographer. At first it was just a commission for a shirt design for the race. I was looking for a new shirt project at the time, so this was the perfect push to get the creative juices flowing again.
Eventually, it became a full-blown project with me designing most of the collaterals for the event.
The Logo
Luckily, Jose, who was also the race director of the whole shebang, gave me free reign over all the design stuff. They just gave me the guidelines, but most of the stuff was my choice. The first thing I had to make was the logo. This was the centerpiece of the whole project as all the rest of the designs will be consistent to this look.
After some research on the usual trail run logos, I went with the badge type to make it look solid and formal. At the time, I was in love with the color scheme of the Ultra Trail Chiang Rai and as you can see, it was the main inspiration.
So from a colorful logo, I went with the black and yellow to keep things neat, simple, and consistent.
The Shirt
Next up was the main event. This was the one I was most excited to make. Using the color scheme of the logo, I added some Filipino feel to the shirt with some ethnic patterns and symbols. The design was pretty straightforward and thankfully, the bosses approved of it.
Seeing the shirt being worn by people was the best feeling and some even told me that it looked great! I know it’s a bold move to make the shirt white when running the muddy route of Wawa, but I secretly wanted to see them splattered with mud at the finish line. 🤭🤭🤭
Online Postings
Aside from the logo and the shirt, I was also in charge with the usual artworks for posting at the event page. It was a fun task and being on the other side of the process was an eye opener. Usually it was me just browsing the event page. Now I’m the one creating the content. Cool!
My favorite part was vectoring the mandatory item icons and also creating the route maps. It took a bit of time but I like how it looked once it was done.
Offline Designs
Up next, I was tasked with creating the medal and race bib designs. The feel of the event was already dictated by the logo, shirt, and online artworks. So it was easy making these as I just had to remain consistent while creating a different output.
I have to say, seeing the actual medals and bibs made me kilig! Jose was very good at finding suppliers who made the medals look good and faithful to my design.
Aside from these, I also made the stage tarp, finish tarp, as well as the U-turn and Ayaas summit banners. Again, the key was just to maintain consistency with the already established feel of the event.
The Race
One of the perks of designing the collaterals is that I get to run for free! Thanks to Jose’s permission, I was able to run the 21 kilometer category with Khat. This also served as my comeback run to the trails. It was a month or two of road races and I missed the fun of the wild outdoors.
Although Wawa has long been familiar to me, I was happy to be back out there again. The route was wet and wild, but the aid stations had a lot of food and the marshals were helpful and provided relief to all the runners. Thank you to all my trail friends who volunteered! It was nice to see you all again.
It felt amazing crossing the finish line all dirty and muddy but with barely an ache in my legs. After almost 5 hours in the trails, I felt refreshed. There was a lot of activity at the finish area and I mingled with the trail community once more.
Thank you to Master Lao and Jose for this opportunity. It was a great exercise, both making the designs and running the route. Cheers to more runs and designs in the future. 😉
This was a high point in both my creative career as well as my fitness journey. It’s good to use my skills on something I am passionate about and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to do it again. Thank you, Big Guy, for this highlight.
Run safe and have fun!
-jgzn
P.S.
Drop me a line if you wanna collaborate! 🤣
Jai Online 