Purpose
In collaboration with 🔗 Welcome to Chinatown and 🔗 Gotham Park for the 2025 Lunar New Year Fair – Year of the Snake, I was responsible for the key art for this project. My role involved creating brand illustrations as the foundation for the event’s visual identity for digital online promotion and vendor booth prints. The project aims to capture the essence of the Year of the Wooden Snake, the festival’s spirit, and the unique cultural landscape of New York’s Chinatown.
2025 Lunar New Year/ Welcome to Chinatown x Gotham Park
Responsibility
Key Art
Character/Pattern Design
Branding
Credits
Welcome to Chinatown
Harry Trinh, Creative Director
Post on the Kelly Clarkson Show #WHAT I’M LIKING
Background
Gotham Park, a nonprofit founded in 2021, revitalizes underutilized spaces beneath Manhattan’s Brooklyn Bridge, creating a vibrant, community-led public space. Their mission is to create a community-led, world-class public space that fosters connection, resilience, joy, discovery, and wonder. The Gotham Park reopened in November 2024, the park continues to evolve alongside bridge repairs.
Welcome to Chinatown and Gotham Park are collaborating to organize the 2025 Lunar New Year Fair - the Year of the Wooden Snake! This event welcomes all New York communities. The event will feature a lively marketplace with shipping container booths, cultural activities, and festive decorations, bringing fresh energy to Gotham Park while celebrating the new year together!
The New Look from Gotham Park
Goal
For this project event, my job was to create "key art" for the event "2025 LNY Fair" branding, highlighting the "Year of the Wooden Snake" and elements of the festival and New York's Chinatown. The content elements of the images could be split as graphics for media posts and digital print while maintaining content consistency.
The photos from traditional Chinese paper cutting
Inspiration
One of the key ideas in this design is the “traditional elements” and the “modern atmosphere.” Discussions with Harry and the Moodboard he made focused on the traditional Chinese art of paper-cutting. In Chinese New Year, red paper-cut decorations are essential to yearly festivities. Red paper-cut decorations symbolize joy and prosperity and are typically displayed during festivals and special occasions like weddings.
Paper cutting, originally a folk art crafted with scissors, is a highly adaptable medium. By incorporating modern elements and contemporary design sensibilities, this craft can evolve into a fresh, unique artistic expression.
Style and Elements
1. Traditional paper-cut style version
2. Minimalist lines version
3. Versions combining a sense of line and graphic
Style
In the early design stages, we explored ways to modernize traditional paper-cutting while preserving its symbolic yin-yang composition of hollow and solid spaces.
In Picture 1, I applied a traditional paper-cutting approach, emphasizing handcrafted details and detailed patterns. In contrast, Picture 2 simplifies the technique into a minimalist line-based style, maintaining key geometric forms while keeping the content.
Building on both, Picture 3 combines delicate handcrafted details (Picture 1) with organized curves and straight lines (Picture 2) to create a sophisticated and vibrant composition. In addition, the design incorporates elements inspired by New York's cultural landscape and traditional Chinese culture, enriching the design's various features.
Snake Style
The snake carries complex symbolism in Western culture. In the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, it represents temptation and the fall of human beings. In literature and mythology, it embodies duality, both protector and trickster, danger and renewal, wisdom and deception. But in the Chinese zodiac, the snake symbolizes wisdom, abundance, and positivity.
To avoid any negative associations, we discussed with Harry how to subtly incorporate the snake into the design. We kept it as minor elements, using soft, rounded lines to create a more welcoming feel. Additionally, traditional Chinese paper-cutting often decorates the snake's back with floral or geometric patterns, reinforcing its meaning as a symbol of good luck and prosperity.
Booths and Characters
4. Sketches and detailing one spot first
5. (Left) Monochrome illustration
6. (Right) Monochrome buildings and colorful figures blend
Fair Poster
The final part of the design process was creating the fair poster, combining the chosen style and elements to capture the event's spirit. The goal was to highlight the festive atmosphere and theme of the fair.
To do this, I illustrated various booths showcasing different goods, reflecting the lively marketplace experience. Since the fair is in Gotham Park and welcomes people from all over New York, the design needed to emphasize inclusivity. Harry particularly wanted the characters to represent the city's diversity: shoppers, young children, trendy young adults, dog walkers, cheering crowds, and lion dancers, all coming together to celebrate.
This approach ensures that the 2025 Lunar New Year Fair feels vibrant, welcoming, and open to everyone, creating an exciting and inclusive celebration.
