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MANILA, Philippines—Written on the walls of FXB’s space-age design headquarters are these words:

“We are nothing
we have no soul
no roots no spiritual guidance
no underlying direction rudderless...”

“Fearing moulded by authority
We are a lie a falsehood a searing embrace
of all that is told unquestioned lives
held forth by a path already worn”

“We’ve become a society of two-dimensional magazine cut-out people all self-absorbed with mindless prattle.

“We are born a century too late. Or a century too early to have soul.”

It would seem a bit odd, almost surprising even, that such mantras—which could have been taken from the Anarchist’s Handbook—are the wellspring of graphic design genius that challenges definition.

Rebellious sensibility? Anarchy pop? Ordered madness? Future-perfect vision?

It is the trademark reaction of hip communication, that movement that breaks off from hackneyed, traditional media. It is the visual language of FXB, or Futura Extra Bold, a design group that thrives on eluding that kind of boxed-in, hasty stereotyping.

In FXB’s universe, the familiar is fused, creating a body of work that is astonishing and brand-spanking new: bold typography, street graffiti, photography merged with solid lines, splashes of color, shadowy figures and cartoon characters that have survived a spin cycle—all coexisting in this design universe.

FXB’s creations are the kind of art that gives one pause. One of its biggest murals hangs boldly in the children’s section of the country’s biggest bookstore. Far from the expected display of sweet little wide-eyed characters from classic fairy tales, the image is, instead, of a parallel dimension painted in caustic green: a hookah-smoking caterpillar watching over fairy tale bedlam, where three little pigs, white rabbits and tortoises run away from the Big Bad Wolf’s crime scene. There are no apologies.

By-product

FXB’s point of view reflects today’s breed of art—a by-product of modern pop culture assaulted on all fronts by rapid-fire digital media. It is emblematic of art that can never be static. The purpose of design, after all, is communicating ideas in a way that compels the individual to react and change.

FXB is spearheaded by Lorraine Meñez-Obusan and Kara Tolentino-Prieto, two females who themselves escape archetypes. They personify that inborn quality of hip that informs their creative portfolio.

Meñez-Obusan claims to get her ideas from drowning herself in comic books every day. She cites the likes of Paul Pope, Calatrava, Katayama, Piano, Basquiat, Sugimoto, Bansky, Bermejo and David Finch as a few of her many sources of inspiration.

FXB started dipping its paintbrushes in the world of graphic design in 1997, and has recently progressed to 3D animation. What sets their work apart in this Photoshop-obsessed industry is the design process itself.

“We like playing dirty. Literally,” says Meñez-Obusan. Their creative team strips the process back into the basics, reminiscent of lessons in art school.

“We paint, draw, scrub, build, deconstruct, rip, spray, splatter and splash. We formulate, we conceive, we posit... and then we call on our Macs to finish the job.”

Balance

How do they strike a balance between personal artistry and the client’s demands—a problem many graphic designers face?

Many times, say the two, their artistic inclinations rarely figure into their clients’ equations, so there’s a lot of compromise in the end. “It is very dangerous to compromise. But we always take horizontal steps rather than vertical. It is never a linear progression,” explains Meñez-Obusan.

Anyone thirsting for creative juices can take a cue from their philosophy: Get out of your intellectual comfort zone and plunge into something new.

This is expressed most forcefully by a quote from Jack Kerouac that adorns their workstations: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never and never say a commonplace thing.”

“I always tell them, there’s one royal load of things to draw inspiration from out there,” says Meñez-Obusan. “You just have to know where to find them.”