The archive · Design & Visual · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Oatysis' 24 Solar Terms Series turns China's farming calendar into 24 typographic posters
Grain brand Oatysis and Bright Woo Studio made one poster per solar term, using typography to reconnect urban China with the farming calendar behind food.
Oatysis · Bright Woo Studio
What it had to solve
The ancient Chinese divided the sun's annual motion into 24 solar terms that guided farming and crop growth, but people who no longer live close to nature struggle to see that connection. Oatysis, an enterprise built on grain food, wanted to promote traditional solar-term culture and pull attention back to agriculture and nature.
How it works
The ancient Chinese divided the sun's annual motion into 24 solar terms, each one guiding what happens in the fields. Modern city life has left many people unable to see how those terms still shape farming and crop growth, so the knowledge quietly fades. Oatysis, an enterprise deeply engaged in grain food, decided to make the connection visible again.
Working with Bright Woo Studio, Oatysis produced one poster for each of the 24 terms and released them across the lunar year. Each image pairs phrases from classical texts with illustrated typography that evokes the term's weather and crops, supported by other branded materials.
The series turned an agricultural calendar into modern brand communication, mapping a grain maker's year to the farming rhythm its food depends on. In 2023 the typographic work won a D&AD Graphite Pencil and an ADC bronze, and it now sits in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- A fixed 24-part structure gives the series a natural rhythm: one poster for each stage of the farming year, all the way through the calendar.
- The subject is the client's own business — a grain-food company and the farming calendar tell the same story, so nothing feels borrowed.
- Illustrated typography lets each poster be read as a picture of its weather and crops, which carries the idea without long copy.
- D&AD and ADC recognition showed an authentically Chinese cultural idea could win in international design juries.
What it did
The series earned a D&AD Graphite Pencil and an ADC bronze award in 2023 and is filed in the D&AD awards archive, proving a food brand can build a year-long cultural voice from its own production rhythm.
What you can take
A brand whose business follows a natural rhythm can make that calendar its creative system: print each stage of the rhythm beautifully and the connection to nature explains itself.
Since then
Released across the lunar year 2022 and recognised in 2023, the series was filed in the D&AD awards archive, where the entry still carries its original brief: to promote Chinese solar-term culture and encourage people to pay attention to agriculture and nature. It stands as a reference example of a food brand building communication from its own production calendar rather than from product imagery.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card