Cambridge, MA, U.S.
Tri-campus Celebration Event
06.2022 - 08.2024
University of Nottingham
UK / China / Malysia
Instructor:
Jiang Wu, Che Zhang
Lead Designer:
(2022-2024) Yanchen Shen
Group Member:
(2022-2023) Zhiyi Chen, Glorianne KEPARTONO, Zihan Lu, Ziyun Xiao
(2024) Xiangqin Shi, Yifan Chen, Jiayi Duan, Ouyu Li, and Kailing Xie
# Package Design
# Graphic Design
# Event Planning
Event Description
This event originated in June 2022 with the UNNC mooncake and packaging design project, where the team introduced the innovative concept of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival across three campuses. The gift box was an instant hit among students and faculty, selling out in just one second on the Taobao store. Due to its widespread popularity, the project’s lead designers expanded the mooncake collaboration in 2023 from the China campus to the UK and Malaysia campuses, achieving a truly unified tri-campus celebration. The lead designer was reappointed for 2024, forming a new mooncake and packaging design team. With support from the UNNC Department of Campus Life, they facilitated a collaboration between UNNC and the Hemudu Site Museum, the Former Residence of Wang Yangming, and the Ningbo Bang Museum for a special co-branded design.
Design Description
2022-2023:
The design highlights the diversity and co-prosperity of the Nottingham family by emphasising the theme of “sharing” and “connecting”. The design of the outer packaging is based on the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival concept of "A Thousand Miles Together". It features the iconic Trent Building of UNNC, University of Nottingham UK and the Malaysia campus, showing the beautiful scene of the three buildings located in different parts of the world while being lit under the same moonglow.
The four small boxes inside the package are each printed with birds unique to each campus. When the box is unfolded, there is a postcode box and a stamp frame, which allow overseas exchange students to send a letter to their hometown in the traditional way.The mooncake bears a new design: the symbolic university emblem and the Trent Building of the three campuses. It implies that ‘Though miles apart, we are under the same sky’, representing the reunion of people from the three campuses.
The packaging of mooncakes have made innovative attempts to put into practice the sustainable development advocated by UNNC. Not only is the decoration simplified by using hot stamping instead of large areas of inkjet to reduce printing pollution, it also adopts a plug-in style, which reduces chemical adhesives while significantly saving the boxing space required for transportation.
2024:
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, UNNC has teamed up with three key research and study bases – the Hemudu Site Museum, the Former Residence of Wang Yangming, and the Ningbo Bang Museum. Together, a special edition of mooncakes is launched, offering students a captivating cultural feast.
The mooncake gift box design features a "River of Time" theme with prints of rings, bamboo tubes, waves, and polygons, symbolising historical and cultural elements of Ningbo. Each motif represents a significant theme: Hemudu Site sun artefacts, Wang Yangming’s bamboo study, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Ningbo Bang, and UNNC’s Trent building. The inner boxes contain mooncakes with designs reflecting these themes, paired with innovative fillings like traditional lava egg custard, pandan coconut, gardenia peach gum, and taro chia seed. Each box also includes a coloured paper that, when folded, forms a 3D Jade Rabbit representing originality, stability, perseverance, and liveliness, aligning with the box’s themes.
News
Photo: Yanchen Shen, Xiangqin Shi, Haoming Xia, Jiarui Feng, Junren Mao