Some Guidelines for New Year's Greeting Cards

(Minghui.org) Practitioners around the world take the initiative to send greeting cards and holiday greetings to Master Li Hongzhi on the occasion of various holidays each year. The greetings are sent to the Minghui website as an expression of respect for our great, compassionate Master. Tens of thousands of cards and messages not only voice practitioners' heartfelt gratitude, but also share the extraordinary magnificence of Dafa with the world's people. 

New Website Presents Greetings in One Place

In celebration of the January 1 New Year, Minghui published, over a period of several days, a sampling of the thousands of greetings received. These have now been collected together and presented at http://Greetings.Minghui.org. We understand that such greetings have very powerful effects in shocking the evil elements that continue to persecute Falun Gong under the CCP regime in China.

The Chinese New Year this year falls on February 10, 2013, and many practitioners will soon be preparing greeting cards. Based on issues that have arisen in the past, we would like to offer a few reminders, so that the cards carefully produced by practitioners to send their greetings to Master can be published, and without delay.

Special Note to Western Practitioners

Western practitioners are encouraged to send New Year's greeting cards to Chinese Minghui in their native languages, as doing so is quite effective in suppressing the evil and destroying the notions that the CCP has used to poison the minds of the Chinese people. However, such cards should include some basic Chinese New Year's greetings on them, such as "祝师父新年快乐" (wishing Master a Happy New Year).

Where and When to Submit

Send greetings to [e-mail]. Since the Minghui staff experience heavy workloads in processing the thousands of greetings received, we hope practitioners will submit greetings early, not at the last minute.

File Format and Resolution

JPEG files with a resolution of 600 x 600 pixels are preferred. Resolutions of 800 x 600, 640 x 480, 1024 x 768 and other commonly used greeting card sizes can also be accepted.

Additional Detailed Guidelines for Greetings Submissions

1. Wording and graphics need to be timely. For example, New Year's Day and Chinese New Year each need appropriate wording, carrying respective cultural implication. For example, Mid-Autumn Festival graphics frequently have a full moon in the background, while Falun Dafa Day graphics focus on the theme of Falun Dafa Day.

2. Color and lighting should be bright, harmonious, elegant, and celebratory. Some colors are not suitable for dominating the picture, like black, white, bright red, blood red, or heavy, dark colors. Color matching should meet the goal of pleasantry and kindness.

3. Composition should be focused and not overly complex. A small greeting card has limited space. If too many words, objects, and colors are squeezed in, the theme will not stand out.

4. The content and design of greeting cards, congratulatory letters, calligraphy works, paintings, and other art works should convey the respect disciples hold for Master. Do not use Master's portrait on the cards. The production of Master's portraits require special care.

5. Poems are best written by Dafa practitioners ourselves. Content and wording needs to be appropriate. We should take into consideration that Master may read it, so we need be respectful. Non-practitioners may also read it, so we want to make it accessible.

6. Party culture is something to be avoided completely in greeting cards and congratulatory letters. Do not use warped words introduced by the evil Party. Examples include, avoid calling Chinese New Year the "Spring Festival," avoid using the "evil Party red," especially avoiding this color at the center of the picture.

7. The composition should be clean, pleasing to the eye, and clear. Choose an elegant font, and try to avoid italicized words as much as possible.

8. Some cards are framed. Please avoid using black as the frame color, which is incongruent with the holiday mood. Also avoid white characters on a black background, which violates the basic design requirements of holiday greeting cards.

9. Avoid making all of the flowers in the greeting card white. Some may feel that white flowers symbolize the pure hearts of disciples, but we need take into consideration the Chinese readers' feelings when seeing flowers that are all white.

10. Some greeting cards have a beautiful, colorful background, yet congratulatory words addressed to Master are in a large, black font, which makes the whole picture out of balance, poorly coordinated, and inelegant.

11. Some cards look blurred, hazy, or display distorted images. This should be avoided in greeting card design.

12. Some fellow practitioners may want to make the card more colorful, and use different colors for each Chinese character in a sentence. This is not recommended, as it can make the picture appear messy and carelessly created.

13. Do not save or embed pictures in PDF or Microsoft Word documents. Minghui cannot publish these documents. The editing team will have to manually extract graphics from these file formats, which causes significant delays. Please include any captions in the email body, not just in the email subject line.

We hope these suggestions will help fellow practitioners both in China and overseas achieve the goal of sending greetings to Master, clarifying the facts, and effectively shocking the evil elements behind the persecution.

Heshi.

January 18, 2013