By Tubik Arts

By Felic Art

By Tubik

By Brian Woodard

By Icons8

By Erikas

By Shakuro Graphics

By Michal Urbanski

By Adam Koon

By Julia Bezvershenko

By MUTI

By Dmitry Stolz

By Kit8

By Sara Geci

By Yondr Studio

By Ivan Dubovik

By Adam Koon

By Mauro Gatti

By Yiffy Gu

You may also like the collections of autumn illustrations, summer illustrations, love illustrations, spring illustrations, winter illustrations, quarantine life illustrations, and other D4U Inspiration posts

Сообщение Art of Thanks: Lovely Thanksgiving Illustrations появились сначала на Design4Users.

“Festivals are fun for kids, fun for parents and offer a welcome break from the stresses of the nuclear family. The sheer quantities of people make life easier: loads of adults for the adults to talk to and loads of kids for the kids to play with.” Tom Hodgkinson

China joined in celebrating January 1 as New Year’s Day more than a century ago, but the traditional Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, remains the brightest national holiday. For Chinese people, it is the time to bring a family together and relax from work, while for a tourist, Spring Festival is an opportunity to visit one of the most ceremonious and colorful events in the world. Today many countries hold various festivities and parades to celebrate Chinese New Year. The biggest celebration out of China borders takes place in the US, in San Francisco, to be more specific. The famous district called Chinatown transforms via decorations and it’s easy to forget that you’re still in America.

The unforgettable atmosphere of Chinese New Year has inspired many artists and designers to create loads of artworks dedicated to this holiday. Now, when Chinese New Year is at the height of celebration, we’ve decided to devote the fresh issue of D4U Inspiration to the blossoming holiday which hopefully brings you the inspiration.

A bit of history and traditions

Chinese New Year holiday appeared centuries ago. According to the tales and legends, there was a mythical beast called Nian (Chinese word for “year”). At the end of every year, it appeared in villages and attacked folks. One day, to defend the village one man decided to meet the beast holding red papers up and using firecrackers. The monster ran away and never got back. Villagers understood that Nien was afraid of red color and loud noises, and after that, they held the noisy and colorful festival at the end of every year to scare evil spirits away.

Today, it’s the most expected public holiday in China which is full of traditions. The celebration of Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days. Before the holidays start, the Chinese thoroughly clean their houses and decorate them with traditional red items. The red color is believed to be a color of happiness and good luck.

The festivities traditionally start in the evening preceding the first New Year Day. Families have a reunion dinner at home. Traditional dishes are fish and dumplings (a dish consisting of small pieces of dough made from a variety of starch sources, often wrapped around a filling similar to wontons), which are said to signify prosperity. Traditionally, adult family members give red envelopes with cash to children during the dinner: they believe it will keep them healthy and give them a long life. In the modern world, the tradition has been a bit interpreted: for example, some youngsters send money in virtual red envelopes to each other via mobile applications just for fun.

Chinese people celebrate the Spring Festival not only at home with the families but also publicly, through loads of cultural activities such as firework displays and dragon dances. Fireworks are used to scare away the evil spirits from China. Dragon dances are common during Chinese New Year. Depending on the part of the country, folks dressed up in the big dragon or lion costume dance to deafening drum beats with the view to evicting bad spirits and demons away.

The 15th day called Lanterns Festival marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. Chinese families walk down the streets carrying lit lanterns of different shapes and colors. Recently, it was commercialized as well as St Valentine’s Day symbolizing the time when single people can find their love.

We’ve searched for various artworks devoted to Chinese New Year and here are some of them to make you feel the spirit of the coming holiday.

By baiheng

by Jingyi

by 大拧巴

By Valts

By Claire O’Brien

By Alex Riegert-Waters

By Pau Coro

By nidhi chanani

By George Otsubo

By MUTI

By Alexey Kot

By Chiou

By Yudha Aditya GZ

By Irene Li

By Yi Mi Xiaoxin

By Yi Mi Xiaoxin

By Wander Yang

By Laughing

By hailong xiang

By Xindi Yan

By spovv

by Tú Bùi

By MUTI

By Mike Tosetto, Alex Barnet, Tim Clapham, Dan Braga

If you don’t want to miss the fresh collections and posts for your inspiration, join the friendly community of our subscribers and get the updates immediately in your inbox. Stay tuned and have a bright successful year!

You may also like the collections of love illustrations, spring illustrations, winter illustrations, summer illustrations, autumn illustrations, and other D4U Inspiration posts

Сообщение Happy New Chinese Year: Bright Designs to Celebrate появились сначала на Design4Users.

Halloween is an opportunity to be really creative. Judy Gold

Although Halloween is definitely not aimed to be the most positive celebration comparing to other holidays, still its popularity is amazingly wide and spread all over the world. Today even the countries far from the historic background, which brought Halloween and its traditions to the list of holidays, are keen to take the best from the day. And also it’s not a secret that Halloween has a great impact on business: the only fact stated by history.com and mentioning that one quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween looks really persuasive.

Halloween has also grown into the great source of inspiration for designers who try themselves in various styles, techniques and materials working over new concepts devoted for the holiday: perhaps, there is no design direction that would avoid participating in this movement. Posters, costumes, home decor, invitations and cards, toys and packaging, food decor, illustration, digital art for websites and applications – everything applies powerful creative force fighting for users and buyers attention. And in this process sometimes great art works with immediate wow-effect are created. No wonder that the week before this bright celebration, D4U Inspiration post will be fully devoted to the theme: today we offer you the extensive set of diverse artworks with bright and ominous Halloween spirit!

Background and history

A bit of history won’t do harm to get deeper into details surrounding this famous holiday and preserving people’s beliefs and traditions.

Roots of the custom of celebrating Halloween are hidden in the ancient Celtic festival Samhain (pronounced sow-in) and it marked the beginning of New Year which Celts started from 1 November. The day celebrated the crossroads between the summer ended with harvest and start of the winter with its gloomy cold mood. There was a strong belief that the night between old and new year pushes the boundaries between the world of live and the world of dead. So, Samhain was celebrated as the day when ghosts can come to people while Druids can get their support and predict the future. The day was full of bonfires, sacrifices, specially made costumes and the like. Later, along the line of historic changes and cultural interactions, the tradition mixed with the customs of Roman Empire to commemorate the dead at that time of the year and honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees.

The holiday went through multiple transformations and found its followers in different countries, still America became perhaps the most fruitful ground for it to get deeper roots. High diversity of cultural background of the immigrants from many countries coming to the New World added new features and interesting points making Halloween celebration even brighter through history. Now this is the time when lots of children and adults are open to the mysteries and fun, bright emotions spiced with little pinch of horror.

Certainly, this day is still linked to numerous superstitions that strongly support its mysterious and scary image. People often leave spare places and dishes on the festive table for their dead relatives that could visit them. Black cats are avoided with specially high attention this day due to ancient beliefs of their connections to witches and spirits. People born this day are believed to have superpowers and forseeing abilities. Anyway, whether people really believe these superstitions or just take another chance of celebrating bright moments of life, Halloween becomes a great part of modern culture and annually ignites designers and artists to present the world new and new pieces of creativity. Today Halloween motifs are featured at everything that felt designer’s touch, from traditional illustrations, posters and cards to digital art for computer games and user interfaces. Many samples of design for Halloween show the childish style and nature, as children are directly involved in the process, especially via “treat-or-trick” tradition.

So, let’s look at the variety of visual artworks grounded on the ancient traditions mixed with innovative forms and design techniques and catch some spooky and mystic vibes.

Halloween Design Gallery

By Inkration

By Mauricio Abril

By Icons8

By Caley Hicks

By Caley Hicks

By Alexey Tikhonov and Natalia Plotnikova

By Daria Danilova

By Agatha Carelus

By Tim Verhoeven 

By Julia Molchanova

By Denis Krasavchikov

By Tad Carpenter

By Anna Paschenko

By RADIO

By Justas Galaburda

By AomAm

By Junissa Bianda

By Kate Frolova

By  Hyoju Park

By Pamela Barbieri

By Dmitry Stolz

By Victor Evsyugin

By Gev Marots

By Natalie Smith

By Julien

Bright and shaky Halloween to you! Stay tuned!

For more inspiration, check the sets of other posts from our D4U Gallery, where we gather impressive creatives to share their art with you, for example:

• people illustration gallery
• wine packaging design
• captivating 3D animation concepts
• Procreate illustration tutorials
• realistic 3D portraits
• impressive packaging designs 
• artistic portrait collages
• childhood illustrations
• 3D illustrations
• book cover designs
• sunny digital artworks

Сообщение D4U Inspiration. Halloween Design Spirit появились сначала на Design4Users.