Happy Chinese New Year!

Back Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year is just around the corner. It has now become the highlight of the year for a designer to celebrate the festive season in Asia in an innovative way. Many major brands such as Estee Lauder, Pepsi and McDonalds will launch seasonal packaging to respond to the growing market in Asia. Today, we are going to share some interesting designs just for the new year to bring you a festive vibe!


Rich & Happy - Designed by Rabbit-Z

Gifting is a huge culture in China to show their appreciation to their friends and family, therefore, the gift box design for CNY is also very important for people in the Asian market. You Mi (有米) is a gift box specifically designed for a tea set, You Mi (Have Rice) means rich in Cantonese. Rice is Rat's favourite food in the story, in the year of the rat, the designer use the shape of rice to design a unique packaging for the Chinese tea - Rice Egg.


It is made of white porcelain with a round shape that's easy to hold. It can be used as a tea maker or as a decoration. For example, after drinking tea, you can reuse it as a vase and a pen holder. 


When people pull out the inner box, they can see a rat chasing the golden rice from the window of the outer packaging. The design is not only festive but also playful to make unboxing experience become more interactive. 



The golden rat presented a ritual and blessings. When you open the gift box, you will see three golden rats with different looks around the three rice egg teapots. Each rice egg is affixed with Chinese blessing characters, echoing the theme of rice blessing.


Happiness is all about perspective - Designed by the third PARAGRAPH 

“Happiness is all about perspective” is a set of 8 red packets (also known as a red envelope) collaborated with a Hong Kong paper company Antalis to promote their new paper line “Brisk”.

Traditionally the visual of the red packet is related to the animal of the year, a lot of red packets will be wasted after the festival and will not be reused because animal sign changes every year. With the mission to reduce the waste, the designer chose to use Koi fish as the theme for this set of red packets.


Koi is a symbol of prosperity and fortune. They are vivid, energetic and which has the same energy as the paper company. They are also timeless and able to be reused every year. This design uses illustrations to present the different perspective of Koi fish. From the lotus ponds on the outer box to different angles and composition to show the markings and their shape underwater.


The design echoed with the message “Happiness is all about perspective. Be inspired by a new insight to welcome a fruitful new year.” It's very challenging during production to get the printing effect right. Each design of the red packet has its own printing effect. The designer embossed parts of the fish multiple times to make the perspective of the Koi is well presented. They also used laser cut to present the shape of a swimming koi, the size of each dot has been adjusted carefully to get the balance the aesthetic and the possibility from the machine.