Foreword
By the time I made this portfolio, it was quite near to Tet, or Lunar New Year Holiday. I just miss home, and I can't believe that this is my second year not being at home to celebrate it with my family. I think I miss my grandma the most since she has always fascinated me with her life story and I spent a lot of time with her as a child. Annually, on the first day of Tet, everybody in my family, including my relatives, gathers around at my grandma's house, and she always hands out red lucky money envelopes with the loveliest wishes to all of her grandchildren, including me. This project is dedicated to the moments that only happened once a year, and to my Vietnamese heritage.
Inspirations board
The song that I hear the most in the Tet season is probably "Hoa Cỏ Mùa Xuân" by the singer Mỹ Linh, as the song is beautifully written about this holiday, in the first verse, she sings about all the "iconography" of Tet: new grass, the spring, the smell of flower, the pussy willows. This is the starting point of my project. And then I started to list more inspirations, varied from flowers to food, from clothes to weather.
Graphic mood board
As I've listed on the board, these are all the things I hope to appear in my designs. I've noticed the comeback of 8-bit-inspired elements in designs, as it connotes a spectrum of feelings from nostalgia to modernity, which fits perfectly into the theme of Tet. I also want to at least feature an illustration in the project: which could be fonts or drawings.
Fonts Moodboard
Typography is a big part of my designs, and I'm also keen on exploring and experimenting more within this field. This board helps me to find the mood for the project. Most fonts are skinny with complex glyphs and good for decorative use. I also found some bold, chunky fonts to pair with them. The overall feel of these font combinations should fluctuate between traditional and modern.
OVERVIEW: FINAL OUTCOMES and MOCK-UPS
FINAL OUTCOMES: LUCKY ENVELOPES (SERIES 1)
"Flowers", made using oil pastels.
The process (1)
I want to start from the most conventional designs to the less conventional ones. The first series of envelopes falls under the category of a "traditional" layout. However, I've enhanced the idea by including a hand-drawn illustration of a tree and its flowers. Orange, yellow, pink, and green signify the colours of the kumquat tree, apricot tree, and cherry blossoms tree - 3 of the most popular trees/flowers seen in every household during the Tet Holiday. Traditionally, most fonts used on the envelopes are brush scripts, but I've used a mixture of san-serif (PP Neue Montreal) for a slick, modern feel, and serif (PP Editorial New) for a cute, light detail. Besides, I also used the font "BD StreetSign Sans" for a fun, cheeky touch, as this font reminds me of old billboards in Saigon back in the 80s/90s.
Personally to me, a good design must have an amount of blank space so that every element can create harmony, and I also applied that design philosophy to this series of lucky envelopes.
FINAL OUTCOMES: LUCKY ENVELOPES (SERIES 2)
Different sketches and composition for the typography.
The process (2)
The second instalment of the project is fun, colourful, and somewhat quirky, where the modernity and traditional vibe overlap in this particular design. It features a wide range of typography techniques, from digital type (the type for 2024, and "Year"), to hand-drawn types ("Happy", and "New"). In contrast with the first envelope, this one barely has any blank space, to maximize the use of typography. The 8-bit flower illustrations help to add a chaotic, cheeky, maximalism touch to the overall look.
The composition of the envelope is constructed into 3 sections, the "Happy New Year" digital type, the 2024 type, and the bottom strap in beige. While there are experimentations with the elements and materials used in this design, I still want to make sure that the composition is strong and easy to read.
And you can tell that I totally adore the font "Editorial New" so much that I carried it onto the 2nd series ^^
FINAL OUTCOMES: LUCKY ENVELOPES (SERIES 3)
The process (3)
If the last instalment of this project could be described in one word, that would be "minimal". The composition is nice and clean but also hints at a bit of complexity, with the use of the "zoom-out" font composition for the word "Wood Dragon", but also delicate with the appearance of the font "The Kaluge" as a nice, soft, decorative touch. The way I lined up the words in the middle section of the envelope is inspired by the amulet paper which is usually seen on the altar of every household during the Tet Holiday. Lining up words and characters vertically is also a motif in Chinese traditional writing.
While I was on the journey to create this project, particularly the last design, I found out that Chinese characters are very "decorative", and could be used well in a lot of different design styles. This might be a starting point for my use of different languages in my future designs.
Sometimes less is more, this is especially true when this is my favourite design among the three in the project.
And that's the end of the project!
Surely I did have fun with it.
We are in the special age of technological advancement, where AI can create anything with just a short line of prompts. Hence, I always want my designs to have a human touch, since I believe the fundamental of graphics is to be applicable in real life. I designed these lucky money envelopes based on my beautiful childhood memories, the sense of community, and family gatherings in mind. Besides, I also tried to balance between the "applicable" and "experimental" factors when it comes to working with texts, layouts, images, illustrations, and everything that falls under the umbrella term of designing. With a sense of humour, and all the goodwill, when these envelopes come to real life, I hope they will become a bridge between all kinds of relationships: between the senior and the junior, between friends and family, so that people can give out their best wishes to their love ones in the biggest holiday of the year.
