The Chinese New Year Festival & Parade in occurs every year in early February in San Francisco, California. For such a visually busy and colorful event, T-Mobile needed advertising that would stand out and attract attention, while staying on-brand with the celebration theme, Year of the Tiger.
SERVICES
Print Design
Digital Design
T-Shirt Design
Collateral Design
We created the parade assets from illustrations and graphic elements provided to us from an outside agency, who T-Mobile had hired to create the artwork. We enjoyed experimenting with the layouts, aiming to evoke a sense of campaign continuity while finding creative and playful ways to use the illustrations. The color palette incorporates T-Mobile’s brand magenta with gold (inspired by the Chinese Lunar New Year calendar), T-Mobile’s dark berry, and white.
Print Proofs
On the T-Mobile’s execution of the assets for the previous year, the 2021 Lunar New Year Festival Parade, there was a significant problem with the results of the printing- only after the assets were produced, did they realize that there was not enough contrast between the magenta and the gold, resulting in poor visibility on the design.
This year, in order to ensure the printing was accurate, readable and desirable, we had the print vendors send us proofs of several different shades of gold against the magenta and dark berry of the brand palette, a few weeks before we finalized the assets for printing.
The agency that created the artwork supplied a CMYK and a PMS suggestion. To minimize cost, we wanted to print in spot colors only rather than a full CMYK, so we added 2 PMS color options of our own for the print proof.
This ended up being an invaluable decision; once we received the proofs, we found that the ‘gold’ that the agency who provided the artwork had chosen was muddy and grey in print, versus all the rest of the gold options we chose to test against the magenta.
In the end, we went with one of the PMS golds that we had chosen PMS 7550 C, both for its similarity to the original artwork coloring, and for its ideal tone and contrast when printed.
Envelope
T-Mobile wanted a custom envelope with which to deliver some correspondence, advertisements, and invitations to the parade event. We used this idea of breaking up the background (and tiger) into 4 distinct panels that fit together – a subtle nod to the classic Chinese art style of painting panels. Allowing the tiger to break out of the panels provided some visual excitement and a sense of movement.
Miss Chinatown Pageant Ad
A related on-site event, the Miss Chinatown Pageant, had a physical program for the event. T-Mobile purchased 2 consecutive pages in the program, but they weren’t a spread, rather front and back of the same page, so we designed the ad with this front-and-back (rather than full spread) approach.
Handout Ad
Smaller, half-page ads were handed out ahead of and at the parade, with a call-to-action that both informs and prompts recipients to visit the nearest T-Mobile store. These were much smaller, so we opted to use the descending tiger on these rather than the tiger breaking out of the 4 panels. Having both horizontal and vertical-oriented graphics in our toolkit gave us the perfect amount of flexibility to tailor our strategy to each asset’s dimensions and properties, without compromising the cohesiveness of the campaign.
Barricade Banners
In our area of the parade route, T-Mobile used these banners (in conjunction with barricades) to indicate the boundaries of the parade activities. We designed 3 distinct banners that worked together as a cohesive campaign, to brand and communicate the “Happy Lunar New Year” message as well as the T-Mobile logo and branding.
Parade Flags & Banners
We also created an assortment of parade flags and banners, to visually brand T-Mobile’s locations along the parade route. The Chinese New Year Parade & Festival in San Francisco is an extremely visually busy event, with lots of busy graphics competing for attendees’ attention, so we felt the strong magenta presence would help more than the artwork to communicate the brand on these assets.
In addition to the ‘Year of the Tiger’ graphics that had been designed by another agency, T-Mobile had their own digit graphic representing Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage. While we felt it didn’t exactly match the ‘Year of the Tiger’ graphics, so we didn’t want it to appear on the same asset as the rest of the art, but it coordinated well enough that we could work it in on some assets, along with the message of “Happy Lunar New Year,” to relate it to the event.
Photo Booth + Digital Frame
On-site at the parade in San Francisco, T-Mobile erected a photo booth for parade attendees. We created a photo booth backdrop that would work in conjunction with a digital frame, to brand the final image and commemorate it. Part of the Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage program at T-Mobile was the tagline #UnstoppableTogether. Since this worked both as a printed message and as a digital tag, we decided to include that on the photo frame. (For more details about T-Mobile’s Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage program, click here.)
While working on the digital frame, I wanted to make it seem to interact with the photo more than a standard frame would, so I found ways to place the artwork to break into the photo area, keeping it to the edges so as not to interfere with the subjects of the photo. The results were playful, seamless, and worked without dominating the subjects.
Photo Booth Props
Alongside the photo booth itself, we were also asked to create fun and playful props for the photo booth users to pose with. These would be outside the photo booth area, ready (but not required) for anyone who wanted their picture taken. They needed to be a variety of things, but still fit in with the campaign.
By studying and mimicking parts of the provided tiger artwork, I was able to draw and design a pair of ears and a muzzle to match the illustrated style of the campaign, sizing them each to fit most ideally over human faces. I kept everything within the limited brand palette of the campaign, for both continuity, simplicity, and recognition.
I also added the campaign’s flowers, created a playful 3-dimensional graphic gold ‘2022’, as well as signs with “Happy Lunar New Year” in both languages. This was a nice mix of props that could be used in hair, to obscure parts of faces, above heads, or as celebratory messages.
T-Shirt
We were also tasked to create a t-shirt to sell at the parade, as well as for T-Mobile employees attending the event. T-Mobile wanted their brand presence to be dominant over the ‘Year of the Tiger’ graphics, so we used the Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage T-digit, along with the program’s tagline, #UnstoppableTogether featured on the T-shirt’s front.
On the back, we put in the Year of the Tiger graphics, along with “Happy Lunar New Year” to commemorate the year for the regular attendees. Since we had led with the T-digit, we felt it would be redundant to include T-Mobile’s logo again on the back, so the Year of the Tiger artwork stands along.
Float Banners
Lastly, we were tasked to design corresponding banners for the parade float itself. After trying options that utilized more of the artwork, T-Mobile decided the best strategy would be to lead with their Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage T-digit, along with the program’s tagline, #UnstoppableTogether on the main banner on the float. We also laid out two side flanking side banners, delivering the same “We Stand With You” message from our Miss Chinatown Pageant Ad.
Aside from carrying through the message more personalized to the Asian American & Pacific Islander heritage peoples likely to attend the Parade & Festival, the decision to carry through the messaging from T-Mobile’s brand over the ‘Year of the Tiger’ graphics, meant that this parade float could easily be reused in future years, a valuable evergreen asset. In future years, additional banners or other tactics representing the lunar year could easily be added to this float, while maintaining the consistency of the brand and message.
Graphic Design & Advertising 