We boast about it over and over again: more than 1,000 Boysen Permacoat paint colors to choose from. It would only be right, then, to expect that a paint company would have a colorful office building, right?
Boysen has several offices, one of which is the M1 building along D. Tuazon St. in Quezon City. It houses, among others, its Communications Department which is composed of the company’s in-house creative team. Last year, it was decided that the building’s exterior could use a repaint.
This became a wonderful opportunity to upgrade the building’s mostly white façade into something more vibrant and colorful. And, who better to create a design for the building than the team who comes in to work there most days of the week?
Creating the Design
Tj Fuentes, a graphic designer from Boysen Communications, took on the challenge of designing what was to become a large-scale mural painted on the front and side of the building.
Where to begin? For Tj, inspiration came via coloring books for grown-ups. He describes them as not only a relaxing activity but also as an outlet for creativity. “It’s just a simple coloring book but it allows you to enter a peaceful state which relieves stress and lets you play around with colors.”
He gravitated, in particular, towards mandalas. Going by visuals, the patterns and inherent symmetry in mandalas are captivating and artful. Moreover, mandalas are an instrument of meditation as well. And per Tj, a sense of calm is what he wanted people to feel whenever they saw the mural.
“I like the mandala as a symbol of the flower of life too,” he adds. “It represents interconnectedness and opens us up to be in harmony with ourselves, other people, and the universe.”
Tj made it so that each color of the rainbow was represented in the mural, their shades carefully chosen so they come out vibrant and eye-catching when painted. The goal was to not only showcase Boysen’s range of colors but to also allow the building to stand out and provide liveliness to the area.
Because of their resemblance, some passersby may mistake the mandalas for Christmas parols and Tj welcomes this interpretation as well. “The parol is a representation of our colorful Filipino culture. So, of course, I’m fine with that too.”
Painting the M1 Building
Turning Tj’s design into an actual mural proved to be trickier than initially anticipated, shares Sam Fernandez, also from Boysen Communications. Sam acted as a liaison between the team and the third-party contractor, Hoya Paint Services, for the mural project.
There were the typical hurdles of a repainting project such as finding and securing a capable contractor and computing how much paint was needed to cover the building.
Unique challenges, however, came with the mural. There was the matter of making sure the paint colors chosen were as close as possible to the design. Sam worked with the Boysen Technical Services Department to have the paint colors specially ordered and mixed at Boysen plants, some of which needed colored primers so their true saturation came through.
Then, there’s also figuring out how to break down the design so none of the mandalas lost any of their detail or became misshapen. For this particular problem, Sam and the contractor thought it best to use stencils—a lot of them.
Each mandala would require around 7 to 10 layers of paint and each layer would need a stencil in order to achieve and replicate its intricate pattern and detail. To give an idea of how much work this entailed, the building has 40 mandalas in total. It was, no doubt, tedious work but the result was that every mandala was reproduced perfectly.
Sam shares, “This was completely a new challenge for our contractor and they delivered. The placement and spacing had to be correct, the proportions had to be right. They worked closely on the details and stepped back to make sure it all looked perfect when seen from a distance.”
“It took about a month to complete,” she adds. “Sometimes I look at it and wonder if people know that the design is painted on. They might think we used stickers because the design is so clean. But no, it’s a beautiful paint job that took a lot of people and hard work to do.”
Come See It!
The Boysen M1 mural is not just a design but also a story in itself. Art is, after all, better appreciated when viewed through the context in which it was created. We hope you get a chance to pass by and see the mural for yourself now knowing the process of how it got there.
The M1 building is located at 269 D. Tuazon, Brgy. Manresa, Quezon City. We hope it adds color to your day!
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