By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Photos by Dave Sizer. Copyright © 2025 ConceptShell LLC. All rights reserved.
Seattle Kraken’s Lunar New Year theme night, on Jan. 28, the eve of Lunar New Year, featured a special jersey design from local Filipina American visual artist, Shayla Hufana. The design combined symbolism from Seattle, the Year of the Snake, and Hufana’s Philippine heritage.
Hufana told the Northwest Asian Weekly that she had been peeking at the Kraken’s website for some time. She knew they had something called Common Thread, part of their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, which seeks artists every hockey season to design items for their matches.
“The goal for this design was to help bring more diversity to the game of hockey, while making family, friends, and all people proud who celebrate the holiday,” Hufana says on her website, which showcases her freelance art and graphic design studio, ConceptShell.
Much to Hufana’s delight, she said, it was the Kraken that reached out to her to design a Lunar New Year 2025 jersey.
An artist’s journey
A Seattle native, Hufana grew up immersed in her family’s Filipino culture. She remembers the lively social connections between friends and family when she was growing up, the food, the warmth, the music, the dancing, and sports.
“My childhood was full of love, being creative, and having fun,” she said.
Hufana’s family has been supportive, but struggled at first, when she announced her intention to be an artist. None of them, including herself, were familiar with graphic design, she said, even though it sounded more concrete and profitable than other types of art.
Hufana started out with a business degree but soon realized she “had to be” doing some kind of art every day, so she took on graphics and visual communications as a new path. “I was surprised they were accepting of it,” she recalled of her parents, who maybe were just happy she wasn’t dropping out, she laughed.
“Can you make money?” Hufana recalls her family asking.
Photos by Dave Sizer. Copyright © 2025 ConceptShell LLC. All rights reserved.
Designing a jersey: Tinikling, martial arts, snakes, and bamboo
Familiar with many traditional arts from the Philippines, and the Asian symbolism of plants and animals, Hufana integrated all of these into the snake-shaped design for the Kraken’s jersey. Her project also included visual elements presented throughout the evening, such as projections onto the walls and screens of the Climate Pledge Arena.
The tinikling is the national dance of the Philippines. It features people dancing in coordination around the sliding and tapping of bamboo poles.
Hufana was exposed to tinikling from a young age. She also practiced Filipino martial arts, one branch of which uses bamboo as a fighting weapon. Hufana took the common element of bamboo, which is associated with Asia in general, and used it as a “foundational” framework surrounding the snake. It is meant to give the players “strength and resilience,” she said. It also suits the specificity of 2025, because it is the Year of the Wood Snake.
PNW vibes
It’s not just any snake that Hufana chose for the Kraken design. It’s a Western Washington garter snake, which can be colored black, red, and yellow (there is more than one variety).
Hufana put the red in the Kraken’s logo, along with light ice blue. She also utilized snake scales, which in Filipino tattooing stand for “the eyes of the ancestors” to “give the hockey players this feeling that they’ve got people looking out for them,” she said.
The garter snake in particular Hufana described as “agile,” a good quality for a hockey player, and especially suitable, as they can navigate both land and water, which segued into a hockey ice rink pretty well, she thought.
More than one form of the design was required for the theme night. The jersey shoulder design features Seattle’s Space Needle, which is already part of the Kraken’s “anchor” logo, but Hufana’s design also features two snakes wrapped around the historic Seattle landmark.
“It’s representative of cooperation,” Hufana explained. “Not just in hockey, but the people coming together in the arena and learning about each other.”
Photos by Dave Sizer. Copyright © 2025 ConceptShell LLC. All rights reserved.
Where art meets sport
Hufana grew up loving sports, but doesn’t recall seeing many Asians in the sports she played—then or now. Basketball was and remains her favorite, and she thinks maybe the future will hold more sports-related work for her. She has already created a design for Seattle Storm, as part of her creative efforts with the nonprofit Urban Art Works. You can still go see that mural across from the Space Needle, which Hufana made the season that Sue Bird was retiring.
Hufana hadn’t had a lot of exposure to hockey prior to this commission, yet her enthusiasm was sparked when she attended the Lunar New Year celebration and match, where her design was unveiled.
Putting on the jersey that the Kraken had made for her with her design on it “was really special,” she said.
And so was the evening. Walking through the arena with her wife and two kids, Hufana could see all of the “environmental graphics” she had created sprinkled throughout the arena, including a triangle design, calling to Filipino clan and family moieties in tattooing and other art forms, like textiles
As part of the evening, Hufana was asked to speak along with representatives of Alaska Airlines, who presented that evening’s game.
“I don’t do much public speaking!” she admitted.
Hufana recently committed to her freelance studio full-time. She said that the Kraken reaching out to her at the start of the year was a sign that it’s time to “just do it.”
“I’ve been really happy in that space,” she said.
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
