How AI‑Powered Design Revives China’s 24 Solar Terms in a New‑Chinese Style

Preface

With the rise of AI‑generated imagery, the design team aims to train proprietary AI models that capture their own visual style, improving business efficiency. The high coverage, reuse, and revenue of the 24 solar‑term cards made them an ideal scenario for upgrading to a new Chinese style and experimenting with model training.

Cultural Content

1. Heritage – Cultural Transmission and Aesthetic Context

The 24 solar terms, an intangible cultural heritage, represent a traditional Chinese calendar based on the sun’s influence on Earth, guiding agricultural activities and embodying an Eastern philosophy of harmony with nature. Ancient customs such as incense burning, tea tasting, and rain‑watching are integrated with the solar terms to convey poetic, harmonious living.

2. Theme – Oriental Art and Chinese Imagery

The visual design merges traditional Chinese aesthetics with modern sensibilities, creating a distinctive “new Chinese” style. Inspirations include classic Chinese painting motifs—flowers, birds, insects, fish, bamboo, plum, and ink‑wash—using scenery to express emotion.

Style Presentation

1. Scene Atmosphere Design

Research into ancient Chinese painting and contemporary art led to a style centered on light, shadow, and spatial depth. Traditional composition techniques (foreground‑background balance, perspective, void‑solid contrast) are combined with digital tools that simulate ink‑wash textures, producing a poetic, layered visual space.

Examples: the “Jingzhe” scene depicts early spring thunder, bamboo, and emerging insects; the “Shuangjiang” scene incorporates persimmon symbolism and seasonal activities like incense burning and tea drinking.

2. Character Design

Characters draw from traditional opera, Tang dynasty figurines, and classic portraiture, featuring broad foreheads, full faces, and rounded limbs, exuding a serene, Zen‑like aura. Their attire blends retro and avant‑garde elements—modern hairstyles, new‑Chinese clothing, and exaggerated accessories—to create memorable, timeless figures.

3. Color System

Building on Baidu APP’s color guidelines, the palette adds youthful and oriental tones by adjusting HSB values and extracting pigments from traditional plant and mineral dyes, ensuring vibrancy on digital displays while preserving a light, elegant Eastern aesthetic.

Brand Symbol Design

The brand symbol merges traditional seal motifs with Baidu’s bear‑paw icon and solar‑term cultural elements, forming distinctive visual tags that reinforce brand identity and cultural recognition.

Animation Design – Infusing Life and Zen

Animations act as the finishing touch, creating atmospheric depth and a tranquil, meditative experience that invites viewers to relax and imagine. A series of animated solar‑term cards demonstrates this approach.

AI Model Training Based on the New Chinese Style

Rapid advances in AI‑generated imagery, especially tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, have reshaped design workflows. Stable Diffusion’s ControlNet plugin and fine‑tuning capabilities enable controllable, style‑specific outputs.

For the solar‑term cards, the team adopted LoRA fine‑tuning, using the card designs as training data. After multiple training rounds, the LoRA model reliably produces images consistent with the new Chinese aesthetic while retaining the base model’s versatility.

This end‑to‑end pipeline—research, model fine‑tuning, and practical deployment—has been documented as a reusable asset for future multi‑scene image generation, enhancing design efficiency and quality.

Conclusion

The upgraded 24 solar‑term card design showcases a successful fusion of cultural heritage and AI technology, delivering visually rich, brand‑aligned experiences. Ongoing efforts will continue to explore culturally informed AI‑driven design for broader product applications.