China is a very unique market many international companies misunderstand. During the Chinese New Year festival many western designs will fail: inadvertently using colours such as white, black or grey as background colours during this period signifies death and is extremely inauspicious.

In 2014/2015, I was briefed with creating a Jawbone Chinese New Year campaign for Mainland China and Greater China, matching the illustrative style of traditional marketing materials during this period. This presented a major challenge, as the Jawbone brand is clean and minimal; textures and colours such as red are not used as backgrounds, nor are decorative illustrative elements used.

Working with a colleague from the UK, we created illustrative elements based on the texture from our UPmove product, therefore being justifiable to the brand. These elements were then used to represent flowers and fireworks, both relevant to the Chinese New Year period. After a fight to get the creative approved, our Chinese New Year campaign was accepted by Marketing and featured on the Jawbone home-page takeover.