Cycle of the Lotus

Editorial, Paper Engineering2024Briefed by Pentagram


A Burmese Buddhist Calendar for 2025, discovering the flowers of the months in the shape of a lotus flower









This calendar project blends traditional Burmese culture and Buddhism with contemporary design sensibilities, centered around the symbolic lotus flower—a timeless emblem of purity, growth, and spiritual awakening.

A calendar that doesn’t just mark time, but reimagines it through playful, interactive elements inspired by traditional games and regional symbolism. It invites reflection, interaction, and cultural pride—where modern design meets memory, and play becomes a form of remembrance.














Before settling on the final format, I began by designing on an A3 sheet with a structured layout—illustration at the top, and the calendar grid placed at the bottom corner. However, I soon realized I wanted to move away from the conventional A3 wall calendar format and instead create something more meaningful and culturally rooted. This led me to research how the core values of Buddhism could influence the calendar's layout and form.

The Burmese calendar is primarily based on the Gregorian system, but enriched with elements from Hindu-Buddhist traditions and the Lunisolar calendar—marking moon phases and solar positions. Drawing from Buddhism, I reflected on the lotus flower, a symbol of purity, enlightenment, and rebirth. Since my design already included floral elements, I decided to remove the festival illustrations for each month and focus solely on the 12 symbolic flowers.

Inspired by the circular shape of the lotus—mirroring Buddhist symbols like the Dhamma Wheel and the cyclical nature of life—I reimagined the calendar as a circular composition. During development, it evolved into a lotus with 8 petals, aligning with the Burmese Zodiac system which divides the week into 8 days (splitting Wednesday into AM and PM).

Below are the visual developments and experiments with various compositions that led to this final concept.