Chinese New Year. The Facts

Chinese New Year comes at the first new moon of the year, 20th of January to 20th of February by Gregorian calendar. In 2012 it comes at the 23 of January under the aegis of Dragon which must bring you coziness, understanding, kindliness and warmth.

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Top 6 Facts About Design For Chinese New Year

1. A Festival is Really Bright and Attractive

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Dragon parade with petards and clacks on high poles. People are moving along the streets lightening their way with the help of bright torches.

There are cosplays, theater scenes and attractions on every square, and the sky is filled with kites flying to the Jade Emperor in order to tell him about how the Chinese New Year went.

2. Money as a Wish of Success

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The adults give their children change wrapped in red paper. This symbolizes the wish of prosperity to the family and success in evolution of the child.

3. The sky explodes Precisely at Midnight

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The “First night”. 24.00 precisely. The thunder is heard all over China, fire rockets are flying into the blossoming night sky.

4. Red Clothes as Protection From a Monster

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The tradition of wearing red clothes for New Year is very old one, and it is related to the legend of a monster crawling from its den every New Year’s eve.

One day it devastated the whole village, and only one family which was dressed in red clothes was left alive. They were dressed like that because they were celebrating the marriage of one of their relatives.

Thus, people made a conclusion that this monster was scared away by red color. And since that time people started wearing red clothes in order to keep the monster away.

5. Zao Wan is Responsible For Disposing the Problems

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Zao Wan, the god of home, is responsible for disposing the problems of the year, he is taking them away from home.

Zao Wan is responsible for this because he has been living in the house for the whole year, so he really knows that he needs to dispose the Drop Shadow and MS Sans Serif which every good designer tries to get rid of.

6. Scissors and Knives are Forbidden

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One is forbidden to use a knife or scissors, because according to ethnoscience, you can “cut off” the luck away from you.

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That’s NOT all folks :)

Did you really think we were going to finish the article with just traditions? No way!

These traditions are good basis to come up with new ideas or just things to keep in mind that we, western people, have many cultural differences.

Yep, if you are ready to conquer the Chinese market and think that you can rely on your previous “western” experience… well…

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Here Is The Comparison of Chinese & Western Design

1. Layout: the chaos (for the eyeballs of a western designer)

Minimum navigation: you just find yourself in the ocean of content presented on the landing page.

So, the western user will probably leave such sight because he / she won’t be able to understand where to look at.

On the contrary, if Chinese user can’t see a lot of information at once, he / she would most likely think that the site isn’t worth the attention.

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2. It’s alive: animation everywhere

Chinese website is a carnival which a western user would find annoying and even make his / her eyes hurt, but this is a norm for a Chinese user who would never turn off the animation thinking that this is similar to very annoying advertisement he / she can find all over the Internet.

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3. Brightness Mix

If you’re working on attracting Chinese visitors… Just let your eyes hurt with all these strong and bright colors and sacrifice usability on this altar as well (which no western designer would normally do).

Often this means you make the text difficult to read. A problem? Not at all (for a Chinese visitor).

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4. Let The Text Scroll

Yes, Chinese audience likes this very much despite this trend has died before the beginning of the 21st century for western websites; but that’s not a surprise if you remember the 1st item.

Text scrolling gives the possibility of showing more text, so this feature is very popular in China.

5. Fancy Flash Animation Is Dead? Not For China

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It doesn’t matter who you are creating a website for.

You should use JavaScript and Flash.
The usual things are music, some flashlights and animated cursors.

Despite the fact western and Chinese people have one set of eyes, one set of legs and arms, we have completely different thoughts on how a website has to look like.

There are also more things to keep in mind, but these are the basics to help you not to get lost in the populous eastern country… whooops… we mean website.

The Last Thing to Know About

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THIS is how Jack, the Sparrow would look like if he didn’t learn the ropes of Chinese design. He’s sexy, but he’s definitely not Chinese :)

The Facts Twitter definitely can’t miss:

Did you know? Money as a Wish of Success on Chinese New Year
Did you know? Chinese New Year: Red color – a protection from a monster
Did you know? Chinese New Year: Scissors and Knives are Forbidden on January the 1st