How to express simple culture in packaging

Traditional packaging design is a big category in the whole packaging design and has its own creative design characteristics. The author's experience is discussed below.

First, the concept of "tradition"

"Tradition" mainly refers to human traditional culture. Traditional culture is a civilized achievement gradually accumulated by human beings in production and life in the long historical period. It is also the crystallization of existing human wisdom and the basis for future generations to inherit and develop the knowledge and skills of their predecessors.

Different regions or countries have different traditional cultures, which are closely related to geography, climate, humanities and other factors in each region. The traditional culture of coastal areas and inland areas cannot be exactly the same, or even very different. The traditional cultures of the East and the West, the South and the North will also be very different.

There will also be cultural differences between different eras. A new culture that has gradually evolved or emerged on the basis of inheriting predecessors has become a new tradition over time. Take the evolution of Chinese characters as an example. Compared with hieroglyphics, inscriptions on bronze inscriptions and Shi Guwen are new characters based on the hieroglyphics at that time, but compared with Da Zhuan and Xiao Zhuan, they have become traditional characters. By analogy, official script and regular script were both very popular new writing forms in the Han and Tang Dynasties, but in modern times, they have also partially become traditional writing forms and are one of the main contents of China traditional culture. Another example is the costumes of various historical periods in China. Tang and Song costumes not only inherited many traditions of Han costumes, but also had many new ideas of their own time. However, the costumes in the Yuan and Qing Dynasties were more traditional in Mongolian and Manchu costumes, which was quite different from other eras.

Different nations or races also have different traditional cultures. This is mainly because in a long historical period in ancient times, productivity was very low, and different lineages and different human groups (tribes) all had their own territories or spheres of influence. In order to compete for living space, and because they don't know each other, they can't live in harmony (this phenomenon still exists in some inland hinterland and some backward tribes in virgin forests in modern Africa and America), so that they can't live in harmony in faith, religion, language and culture. This can be seen from the different costumes of different ethnic groups and the traditional culture of weddings and funerals in China.

The traditional cultures of different places or countries, different nationalities or races will inevitably influence, penetrate and blend with each other with the passage and gradual change of geographical location, and gradually blend together with the improvement of human intelligence to live in peace better.

The most important point is that excellent traditional culture is the lifeline to maintain a nation. China is an ancient civilization with a history of 6,000 to 7,000 years. In the long history, the Chinese nation has accumulated rich, profound and excellent traditional cultural heritage, which is an inexhaustible cultural treasure for our future generations. Only by inheriting and carrying forward the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation and absorbing nutrition and essence from foreign cultures can we stand on our own feet among the nations of the world.

Second, the concept of "traditional products"

"Traditional products" is also an important content in traditional culture. Mainly refers to the food with local characteristics (such as Wuxi clay figurine crafts, oil gluten, sauce and sweat ribs; Suzhou pine nut candy, bittern tofu dried food, Suzhou embroidery, sandalwood fan handicrafts, etc. Sesame cakes and dried radishes in party flag; Yixing purple sand tea set, Nanjing salted duck, salted duck, etc. Anhui Xuan paper, ink and inkstone, etc. Kites in Weifang, Shandong, etc. ), ethnic characteristics (such as Muslim food of Hui nationality, Tibetan broadsword, butter tea, etc. ); Guangxi Zhuang nationality hydrangea crafts: Guizhou batik and woodcarving mask crafts. ), the characteristics of the times (with a long history, such as Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar, Danyang sealed wine, LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD wine, Kweichow Moutai, lanling wine, Dukang wine, etc. Of course, local characteristics are generally closely related to the characteristics of the times. Products not available in other places, countries or different times.

Therefore, the packaging of traditional products should fully reflect the characteristics of traditional products in various ways or techniques, fully convey the information of region, nationality and time and space with the help of packaging, and reflect the cultural connotation and artistic conception of packaging. On the other hand, the packaging of traditional products will certainly reflect the traditional cultural information of the product and its location, which also reflects the traditional style.

Third, the creative ideas of traditional style packaging design

Since the Bauhaus era, one of the most important achievements of industrial design is to combine art and technology to design "beauty" for the public's life, that is, all the achievements of industrial design can be accepted and appreciated by the public. Therefore, it is one of the main tasks of our packaging designers to study the creative "vocabulary" that consumers can accept. The so-called creativity of traditional packaging design is to design a creative "vocabulary" through careful conception, and use attractive traditional cultural materials with high cultural taste connotation and high formal aesthetic feeling to convey commodity information to consumers, publicize commodities and better serve consumers. The design of traditional style packaging is not only a simple application of traditional forms, but more importantly, it should reflect the broad spiritual outlook of the Chinese nation and the excellent culture that stands on its own feet in the forest of nations, and at the same time, it can well adapt to China's aesthetic thoughts and consciousness passed down by China consumers for thousands of years.

Based on the above explanation, when we begin to design traditional style packaging, we should fully explore the traditional cultural elements related to the traditional products as the packaging objects and carry out creative ideas. The traditional cultural elements mentioned here refer to the specific forms of traditional culture, such as China's traditional calligraphy (different styles of block letters, cursive script, official script, seal script, etc. ); Chinese painting (different styles of meticulous brushwork, freehand brushwork and splash ink); New Year pictures (such as Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year pictures and Suzhou Taohuawu New Year pictures); Printing; Carving (wood carving, bamboo carving, brick carving, tile carving and jade carving, etc.). ); Different styles and schools of paper-cutting art; Lacquer painting, lacquer painting; Batik and tie-dyeing art; Embroidery art and so on. We can generally consider selecting traditional cultural elements from the following two aspects.

1. Consider the application of packaging materials, packaging modeling and structure.

Packaging materials mainly use natural objects in nature, such as bamboo, wood, rattan, hemp, shells, gourd, reed leaves, tea and so on. Design and make packaging with the artistic conception and local characteristics of returning to nature. In the shape and structure of packaging, we can learn from traditional buildings, transportation, furniture, daily necessities, entertainment, stationery, sporting goods, religion and other articles with artistic value and appreciation value, which are in line with or closely related to the packaged object. Attention should be paid to the beauty, novelty, exquisiteness, science and firmness of the structure in the design.

2. Considering from the decoration form.

From ancient times to the present, various related traditional visual art forms and graphics, such as China's handicrafts such as calligraphy, Chinese painting, sculpture, paper cutting and embroidery mentioned above, as well as decorative patterns and colors of plays, costumes, masks and props, weapons, buildings, furniture, daily necessities, textile printing and dyeing, as well as illustrations, book printing and binding forms of content scenes in works such as classical figures, folk traditions and fairy tales.

Fourth, traditional style and contemporary sense of the times.

The era we live in today has entered the microelectronics era with highly developed technology and huge information capacity. Many things that we thought impossible before have become a reality in modern times. Especially since China implemented the reform and opening-up policy, many advanced cultures and technologies in the world have been introduced to China, and they have been gradually used by us and merged with the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation, gradually forming the cultural status quo of our country in this new period, which is a historical necessity. The ideology of seeking novelty and beauty is possessed by human beings and can promote the continuous progress of society. Only by keeping up with the pulse and rhythm of the times and bringing forth the new can traditional packaging design have infinite vitality and new artistic conception and be accepted by contemporary people.

How to embody the sense of the times in traditional packaging and decoration design can generally be considered from the following aspects:

1. Considering composition and graphic design.

Different from the traditional composition forms, such as concentrated composition at corners, split composition, strong density contrast, balanced composition with empty inspiration, scattered insertion and other modern composition forms, it can clearly convey the sense of the times to consumers.

2. Considering the layout of the design institute.

Modern text arrangement forms, such as flush, flush axis, oblique arrangement, straw arrangement, multi-directional straw arrangement, image arrangement, insertion, step by step, gradual change and cross-plane arrangement, can all reflect the sense of the times today.

3. Considering the design of fonts.

The characters on the package can use modern fonts, such as new song style, new bold style, complex, amber style, new Wei style and various artistic fonts designed by ourselves, and can also use various foreign languages or Chinese Pinyin fonts to reflect the modernity.

4. Consider the structure and shape of the package.

The packaging structure can be portable, sister-style, display-style, combined, rotary, easy-to-open, analog, special-shaped, POP-style and other structures, reflecting the modern sense.

5. Consider from the application of performance skills.

For example, color or black-and-white photography with various expression techniques, high-tech computer production, imitation of natural forms and other techniques can easily reflect today's modernity.