Find some good luck in the New Year! For their 5th year designing collections for the Chinese New Year, Hong Kong studio Blow has crafted up some truly stunning packets with absolutely exquisite details. We asked Ken Lo, Founder & Design Director of Blow, some questions to learn more about this year’s process, exploring design ideas, and printing techniques.
What was one of the biggest goals you set out to achieve with A Flourishing World packaging and how did you accomplish it?
Blow: We want people to see this red packet collection as a must-have item among all other red packets during Chinese New Year. As we already did four collections, I hope this final one can continue the unique style and have a surprise at the same time. Eventually, we hope people will miss all these Astrobrights red packets collections.
You’ve created so many different Astrobrights Red Packet collections in the past—how did you work to make sure this year’s was unique and would stand out?
Blow: We would like to keep the colourful and contemporary style for this collection as previous year. However, when we decided to make it as the last collection, I wanted to create something that is really worth to collect. In the past four years, we already explored flower, fish, bird, and food. In this series, we wanted to include those 4 elements, and add 4 new elements which we didn’t work on before—Mountain, Butterfly, Bamboo and Lantern. By adding these 4 new elements, this collection sounds like a happy ending for me. A deboss circle can be founded on the cover which means perfect, complete.
What was the most challenging part of this project?
Blow: The most challenging part is the concept of this series, how to give the best conclusion of what we did in the past 4 years. And of course, the printing process is complicated as usual.
If you could pick one aspect of the finished design that you like the most or feel especially proud of, what would it be and why?
Blow: Since we launch our first Astrobrights red packets collection, there are getting more people to follow the style. We are happy that we have done something inspiring and help to get Astrobrights paper popular.
Where do you find the inspiration for the beautiful designs of each one?
Blow: The inspirations are mainly come from our Chinese traditional crafts and also contemporary art.
Share one lesson that you learned while developing the finished product.
Blow: What I learn most is different technique of printing. How the printing effect reacts to particular coloured paper. Take silk-screen white technique for example—when you apply white colour on a pink paper and a blue paper, the white can be different.
