Ethnic Invitation — Update

And, six hours later (actually, less than that because I had dinner with Mom for quite a while in between) I have got a concept invitation out. It isn't so "in-your-face" ethnic, but it is obviously ethnic.

Well, actually, I don't know. If some of those invited does not know what Baybayin script is, they would think that all those squiggles are just some ugly, unmeaningful marks. I'm also afraid that some may consider it to high-brow. Not "in-your-face" makamasa ethnic, but high brow ethnic. Like a lot of people thought of the programmes I made for my brother F-'s wedding.

But, as I said, my options were limited, and the deadline was tonight. I don't know, just comment on what you think of all this, okay? Just click on the thumbnail on the right to see the larger version of the invite.

Still, I don't know... I'm insanely proud of it.


This invite was designed, by the way, not to be printed at home anymore. You see, BH and F- may not have the time to print all these out on their own, so I thought, how will they have the invites printed which will be reasonably of good quality but cheap enough to mass produce? I then thought of making it as a 4R print. They could have lots of it cheaply mass produced, at only five Philippine Pesos (that's around 10 American cents) per picture print. It would then be on good quality paper at a much better print resolution than if they had printed it at home.

And it would be done in just an hour, too. The only thing they need to purchase are envelopes to contain them.


I'm glad I was finally able to get some matino TTF of Baybayin. Five, in fact. I got them all here, if you want to experiment with it. Be warned, though, that the fonts do not directly transliterate words into baybayin script. Baybayin is a phonetic system of writing, and our usual keyboards are simply not phonetic. There are rules for writing. For instance, the first line that reads "Kayo ay inaanyayahang dumalo sa" needs to be typed as "Kyo ay= Inan=yyhN= dumlo s" just so that it will display correctly in Baybayin as ᜃᜌᜓ ᜀᜌ᜔ ᜁᜈᜀᜈ᜔ᜌᜌᜑᜅ᜔ ᜇᜓᜋᜎᜓ .

Some Pinoy Tolkien group didn't get that Tengwar (the writing system of the Elves in Lord of the Rings) was also a phonetic system of writing. So, when they hosted a premiere of "The Return of the King" and created a programme for it, they merely wrote down latinized Elvish, downloaded a Tengwar TTF, and used it. So, when other geekier fans (like my twin bro; I honestly didn't notice) who can read and write in Tengwar saw it, what they saw was the equivalent of d@*g-N@bÆt when what should have been meant was probably Legolas rules.

Therefore, learn the actual system of Baybayin if you want to use the fonts.