Lunar New Year stamp passport

2024.02.24

Two red-covered passport booklets (featuring a dragon within a circle and a red-patterned background), surrounded by five square rubber stamps with wood backings.

I collaborated with Youn Chung, owner and founder of Anyoung Super, to create a stamp passport program for local businesses here in Seattle. Our goal was to drive foot traffic to local Asian-owned brick and mortar shops and introduce shoppers to new locations.

This was a trial run for a hopefully larger future project, and we included just five businesses in this initial run:

This was a joint project between myself and Youn. We collaborated on the structure of the program; Youn worked with all the businesses to coordinate program involvement; I created artwork for the individual stamps and the passport and arranged for their creation; Youn manufactured and distributed all the passports.

A white grid of squares with hand-drawn sketches of various stamp designs. The stamps pictured are ideas for OHSUN, Anyoung Super, and Lucky Envelope Brewing. — Because I worked closely with Youn and by extension Sara of OHSUN Banchan, I started with sketches for those two businesses. Initial designs incorporated a dragon, but we collectively decided on designs that weren't Lunar-New-Year-specific. I created three sketches for each of the other businesses; the sketches for Lucky Envelope Brewing are included on the right.

I worked with representatives from each of the five businesses to develop a stamp that incorporated elements of their branding while maintaining a consistent and playful style. Initial sketches incorporated a dragon into each of the stamps as a direct tie-in to the Lunar New Year celebration, as 2024 is the year of the dragon. However, after discussions with Youn and with Sara of OHSUN Banchan, later designs stuck to business branding so that shops could continue to use the stamp after the New Year.

A jumble of square stamps, with grey rubber stamps and laser-engraved wood backing. The visible stamps read 'Sairen' (in reverse), 'Lucky Envelope', and 'Mam's Books'. — After designing the stamps, I outsourced the creation of the stamps to a third party online company. Although I could have carved them myself and mounted them to blocks, I decided that the manufactured stamps would hold up better under repeated use.

The program launched on February 10, 2024 and ran through February 24. Feedback on the program was positive; OHSUN ran out of passports to hand out on the opening day, and businesses reported stamping lots of passports. Customers who redeemed the stamp passports for in store discounts mentioned that they wanted to save the booklets because of the collected art. And many of the businesses have continued to use their stamps for branding purposes.

Two stamp passports, five square rubber stamps, and a sheet of paper covered in stamps. One passport shows the cover (red with a dragon drawn in a center circle; the text reads 'Passport; Lunar New Year 2024'), and the other is open to show the inside (a red dragon is drawn amongst five black stamps). — The final passport featured a dragon on both the exterior and the interior. Stamps for the five businesses fit in amongst the dragon's coils, and all art was completed in a hand-drawn style.