This was one of my favorite promotional campaigns that I got to work on for UNIQLO in January 2020 and the moment our team was briefed on it, I knew I had to take the lead on creating the motif for the campaign. The goal of this project was to create a motif for Lunar New Year that could be implemented into UNIQLO’s In-Store marketing easels that would be appealing promotional deals happening through a specific week in honor of Lunar New Year.
As someone who has a love for illustration, I saw the project as an opportunity to implement some of my illustration skills. Why did this particular project appeal to me so much? Well, Lunar New Year is a holiday that is not just celebrated in China, but also celebrated in Korean culture as well. It is a holiday with which I strongly associate my childhood, filled with traditional Korean rice cakes and monetary gifts from relatives who would wish us good fortune for the new year.
Once I had created the motif and it was approved, I worked together with digital teams to create a cohesive look all across platforms, both in-store and digital media. Overall, once the campaign was completed and the promotional easels/in-store POP signage was put out into the public, it was a huge success, having drawn in a high number of foot traffic into the stores. The visual display was bold, strong, and customers were drawn to it.
For my colors, I took inspiration from the common theme of red and gold as seen throughout Lunar New Year. Red is considered good luck in China and believed to help scare away spirits of bad luck.
As I began the ideation for this project, I did my own quick research online (the images above are from google) and also visited Chinatown in Manhattan on a weekend to see what were some things commonly associated with Lunar New Year. LNY has an association to the lunar calendar that assigns from the Chinese Zodiac an animal and its known attributes to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle. There are 12 animals in total in the Chinese Zodiac and this year, 2020, it was the year of the rat.
One thing that is noticeable is that in all aspects of this design process, there is no rat motif, even though having an animal motif is common in LNY. This was intentional, as marketing leadership requested to not include any rat motifs because of the concern that the visuals of rats would not be appealing (which is a valid concern, considering rats are a common, but unpleasant sight in NYC).