What is Little Hong Kong?
The Hong Kong Student Association at the University of Washington is a cultural club with a mission to promote Hong Kong culture and provide a space of community for Cantonese students within UW. We host our annual Little Hong Kong big event to celebrate the new year by showcasing Hong Kong culture through a festival of food, games, and prizes.
Little Hong Kong is one of our major events that demand a design to entice and draw the attention of a wider audience ranging from the UW community to the greater Seattle area. I had previously designed the poster for last year's event as well. This year, however, I wanted to produce a higher quality design that creatively brands and promotes our event into a unifying collective theme of representing Hong Kong as a little world.
Little Hong Kong 2017 logo identity design
The making of "Little" Hong Kong
While brainstorming for this year's promotional poster, I drew foundational inspiration from the idea of representing a "little world" of Hong Kong. Differing from the typical identity of the well-known Hong Kong harbor skyline, I wanted to create a different perspective of Hong Kong by illustrating the world in an isometric manner. This stemmed from one of my favorite game concepts: Monument Valley - isometric illustrations of geometric & architectural fantasies.
A few inspirations from my Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/arielchann/lhk-2018/
Inspirations were mainly researched on isometric style architecture and landscapes,
as well as research on orientation styles of various design compositions.
Inspirations were mainly researched on isometric style architecture and landscapes,
as well as research on orientation styles of various design compositions.
Illustrating the isometric world
Drawing inspiration from Monument Valley's isometric world, I decided to implement this theme throughout the composition, maintaining it to be relatively minimalistic with a play of negative space with the letters "H" & "K". I isometrically illustrated these block letters, and began building my world of "little Hong Kong" on top of the surface of the letters with a familiar landscape, architecture, and transportation icons. As a result, the little world was completed and illustrated as a small preview of Hong Kong as a fantasy land.
Districts of Hong Kong illustrated
The districts of Hong Kong
The illustration composition is inspired by the multiple districts of Hong Kong. Growing up in Hong Kong, I was familiar with the New Territories residential neighborhoods of Shatin, which I thought was completely opposite from the bustling city side of Hong Kong Island.
I wanted to illustrate the opposite ends of the spectrum by drawing the harbor as the bridge between the two sides of Hong Kong. Some unique district attractions and transportation are drawn including cable cars, ferry boats, MTR trains, taxis, KMB buses, IFC, and the clock tower.
Taking a closer look: zoomed in view of the isometric world (with added noise texture).
Banner version design - cropped illustration to add interest and optimize space.
Little Hong Kong 2018 Promotional Video
The concept of the promotional video is to correlate with the aerial design theme of the graphic poster, in which drone footage of Hong Kong was utilized to represent the overview of the city as a little world.
Editing involved fast shutter edits and impact flashes to compliment the electronic pop instrumental paired with the video footage, providing speed in motion and transition. The combination of macro/eye-level and drone shots adds an interesting contrast to what it is like to experience Hong Kong culture in the densely populated, bustling city.
Directed by Ariel Chan & Wilson Tang
Edited by Wilson Tang
Drone shots filmed by Ted Chan
Macro shots filmed by Ariel Chan
Edited by Wilson Tang
Drone shots filmed by Ted Chan
Macro shots filmed by Ariel Chan
Custom profile gifs
Custom profile pictures were designed to further promote our event via social media platforms, mainly on profiles. The design is created in a form of a gif (frame-by-frame animation) to add interest and catch the audience's attention while browsing the newsfeed. The design alternates in pop colors of the original color scheme, and each individual poses in the frame with custom photo booth props for decoration.
