Gikan was born from a serendipitous meeting of the minds.
From my end, it started with a search for beauty on the internet. First and foremost, I wanted to find designers who could build my foundation website and make it aesthetically pleasing. Ideally, I also wanted to find someone or some team in Iloilo, because my foundation, Sarang Foundation, has ties there. Lastly, I also ideally wanted the person or persons to have a socially conscious mindset.
I spent hours trawling through the internet and began to despair that my “wishlist” was perhaps too greedy. First of all, there is so much content online that I personally think is not aesthetically pleasing whatsoever. The “look and feel” of my foundation’s site was most important to me because the site would really be the only representation of me and the foundation to a global audience, given I was pretty much a one-man show with a day job and little time to be able to spend on physical outreach.
Second of all, I loved the minimalist look of the website of one of Sarang Foundation's partners www.woonhung.co, and her entire visual merchandising aesthetic, and nothing I saw online come remotely close to her level of refinement, in my mind, after days of searching.
After a few days, one site caught my eye: www.artivism.com, based in Iloilo. I loved the look and feel of the site, and as I browsed through I started getting lost in the images, the stories, the events, and the people. I started researching the team involved, and I read about Tin, and found and read her stories and poems online. I kept on searching for more and more of Marrz’s paintings and his incredible digital art. I read about their collaboration with NGOs and themed events marrying art and social impact. I was so inspired by how talented these guys were, but also unbelievably enterprising and purpose-driven, that I felt I wanted to talk to them and see if I could work with them – even if getting to my foundation site wouldn’t be the ultimate outcome.
A few months later, we launched Gikan, and the team built the site for Sarang Foundation.
I barely provided any input into the site's look, because I knew I could trust the guys to understand the foundation’s mission and brand it accordingly. This came from the fact that I was working with a design team who shared my desire to strive for a better world.
I am deeply honored to be an advisor to the team and I am confident that all Gikan clients will be just as inspired as I have been working with the talented team.
