During SY2022-23, the TAS Communications Office will pursue a monthly series helping to prepare the TAS community for the launch of a new branding initiative, in accordance with the TAS strategic plan.  

• Head of School – Update #1  
• Head of School – Update #2  
• Communications Office – October Article #1  
• Communications Office – November Article #2 
• Communications Office – December Article #3 
• Communications Office – January Article #4 

---

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications & Marketing 

Happy Lunar New Year, Tigers! In lieu of hung bao, the TAS communications team would like to offer our community a few interesting parallels as we pave the way to our new brand launch – which is just a few months away. The Lunar New Year season is an especially exciting and reflective time, and so is this new brand launch.  

The Lunar New Year – arguably the most widely celebrated holiday of the year across the globe – is a time when communities come together to share their hopes for good health, happiness, and prosperity. Here are a few traditions that the lunar new year and this brand project share: 

Cleaning your home 

Preparations for the 15-day celebration typically begin weeks in advance, starting with a necessary spring cleaning. It’s often customary for families to clean their homes before the Lunar New Year to literally and figuratively sweep away any ill-fortune from the previous year and to make room for good luck in the new year. 

The TAS brand project has involved a similar level of care and cleaning on a macro and micro level. First, we needed to deeply understand the current state of our brand, looking at our community deeply to see if any things needed to be clarified – or, in some cases, swept away entirely. On a smaller scale, we’ve been doing a lot of spring cleaning internally to prepare for the new brand – taking note of where on our physical campus the old logo exists, going through our website to look for outdated visual identity and language, and deleting many hundreds of resources and website pages to prepare for new, more fitting content. 

Decorating with red 

Ahead of the new year, many celebrants decorate their freshly cleaned homes with a lucky color, which in the case of this holiday, is a bright, vibrant red. Many people decorate their homes with red paper, lanterns, flowers, and fruit because of the auspicious symbolism. In addition to luck, red is also believed to denote prosperity and energy. 

For TAS, our signature colors are blue and gold. We have a rich 70+ year tradition of using these colors to represent us, and it was extremely important to the TAS branding team to continue in this tradition. We will decorate our community with a slight variation of our previous blue and gold tones, but this is something that we, too, believe will help bring our community good luck in the next seven decades. We will use the next few months (and school year) to look closely at our physical and digital campus to find new and meaningful ways to incorporate our new school colors throughout school life to imbue every interaction with our brand. 

Enjoying a family dinner 

On Lunar New Year’s Eve, many people worldwide travel home to celebrate the festival with their families, often gathering for a large meal. For many, it’s the only time of the year when people can travel home and spend time with their families. 

We are thrilled to be able to offer a similar reunion experience for our community members later this year as we will gather to celebrate the new brand experience for TAS. This is especially poignant for us because pandemic policies have severely impacted our campus over the last few years. TAS community members, near and far, please stay tuned for additional information about our brand week, which is likely to take place in the first week of May. We are thrilled to gather with you all to reunite for this historic event. 

Exchanging red envelopes 

The Lunar New Year is often associated with the red envelopes exchanged by many throughout this time. They are often given to children by older relatives and filled with “luck money.” Although we can’t give red envelopes to all our community members, we do promise that many treats and goodies will be exchanged during our upcoming brand week. Get ready for some new blue and gold branded items, Tigers. We can’t wait to show you all our new designs! 

Buying new clothes 

Just as people clean their homes to usher in a fresh start, many celebrants will choose to spruce up their wardrobes at the start of the new year. It’s common for people to wear new clothes on Lunar New Year's Day to signify a clean new start. TAS will also have a clean slate at the start of our brand week this spring. However, we’re not just buying new clothes – although that’s certainly part of the equation. (Hint: be sure to visit the Tiger Shop later this spring to see some of our new items for sale).  

In addition to new TAS merchandise, the School will wear a brand new...WEBSITE. Over the last year, the communications office has been working hard to revamp our internal communications websites including the Parent Zone and the Employee Zone. We’re thrilled to bring you a brand-new Alumni Zone, Summer Academy website, and public-facing TAS website as part of this rebranding. Things may look a bit different (and content will most certainly be placed in new positions), but rest assured that this new website has been lovingly designed for YOU, Tigers. We hope you like our new look. 

Do you see any other similarities between the Lunar New Year festivities and a brand refresh project? Be sure to email us your thoughts, and we’ll feature your words of wisdom with our community in next month’s article, which will focus heavily on the new website experience we’re building. 

Please don't hesitate to reach out to the TAS Communications Office if you have any feedback or ideas for the new TAS brand strategy.