Reflections on the Cultural Pattern of Contemporary Packaging Design in China

China's contemporary packaging design is a quick start and rapid development under the pattern of reform and opening up. However, while accepting the Western advanced commercial packaging culture, the western culture form has been deeply impacting the Chinese packaging design market with a strong momentum, resulting in the absence of independent packaging ideas and language forms for packaging design in China, and packaging design with local culture and culture. The fact that the source is not attached to the shape of God has seriously hampered the lifeblood of innovation in China's packaging design.

Under the influence of the multicultural context of the information age on the packaging design of China, we grasp and adhere to the culture of packaging design, and excavate and sort out the excellent and rich cultural connotations in Chinese packaging design, and combine the essence of traditional culture with the elements of contemporary design. The combination is particularly important.

First, culture and packaging design

Packaging design has a rich cultural implication and is a positive creative result full of human minds. For the cultural characteristics and social attributes of packaging design, we will understand from two aspects.

First of all, packaging design has a stable basic cultural form, and continues to inject fresh and new content into the social culture, and constantly produces a new look that is in sync with the times. In other words, it has obvious characteristics of advancing with the times. Secondly, the advancement of culture has become the driving force behind the development of packaging design. First, human needs for material life, that is, human beings must constantly improve their own living environment and quality of life. For example, transportation, marketing, preservation, and storage during production and living should be guaranteed by packaging design. This demand encourages people to invent and create, and promote the progress of technology and art. The result will inevitably lead to new packaging design results.

The second is the demand of human beings for spiritual culture. Packaging design as a cultural medium carries the national cultural spirit of a country through packaging design images, such as social ideology, aesthetic tendency, moral ethics, and folk custom.

As a culture, packaging design has attracted people's attention for its practical and visual value. Since entering the commodity society, people have sought a popular and vivid way of communication and exchange for their own labor achievements. In terms of its packaging, it has become an important medium for transporting goods, guaranteeing the quality of articles and conveying information. The packaging itself is the fruit of the spiritual civilization of human material civilization, and humans have used this result to create new behavior patterns. Packaging culture aims at pursuing efficiency, function, and aesthetics. It is an integrated form of decoration design and packaging engineering. Therefore, it is a combination of technology and art. At the same time, it integrates the human, material, and environmental factors in the process of use, especially the combination of packaging materials, modeling, and illustrations, and reflects the image of artifacts. Moreover, because the packaging's external interface appeals to human vision with a direct, artistic image, it can guide people's consumption choices and improve fashion consumer tastes in merchandising activities.

Second, excellent national cultural tradition is the cultural core of packaging design

In the packaging design development history, the packaging design ideas and styles of different periods have formed their own characteristics under the influence and nourishment of the national art tradition. It is mainly reflected in the guiding role of traditional cultural ideas and thinking modes in packaging design. Chinese culture emphasizes the harmony of yin and yang, the unity of nature and human beings, and the real organism, the same is not followed; the unity of truth, goodness, and beauty; the unity of emotion and reason; the cultural phenomena and aesthetic texts inherited from these cultural philosophies always dominate people’s thinking. form. What really dominates Chinese traditional culture is Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen. Confucius founder Confucius, with his "benevolence" theory, profoundly explained the relationship between beauty and goodness, referring to the external form of beauty as "literary," and the intrinsic moral "goodness" as "quality," thinking that the quality should be unified. It only has real value. Taoism advocates “doing nothing” and believes that beauty lies in the supernatural nature of utilitarianism and adopts a natural attitude to achieve unity. Buddhism advocates the spirit of the unity of the universe, which "has quietly lost the masses and emptied the world." In short, Chinese traditional culture has long insisted on establishing the value of things from the individual and society, the harmonious unity of man and nature, thus bringing the aesthetic and creation with profound philosophical harmony and moral spirit to the primary position. And all of this, They are all expressed in a visually intuitive manner and emotional language in a unified packaging design form. The essence of this cultural idea is infiltrated into packaging design and permeates the entire history of the development of packaging design in China. A history of the development of packaging in China is also a materialized cultural history. The academic community believes that before the 20th century, foreign countries mainly used glass containers as their main packaging tools, while in China they used pottery etc., and pottery was proved to be the packaging container for human storage items used earlier. The pottery's mechanism is widely discussed. According to the records of ancient books, Zhou Shu said that Shennong made pottery; “Wuyuan” stated that Shennong had made shrine; “Pearl” said that the bottle was made by Shennong; “Zuo Zhuan” said that Yan Emperor (No. Shennongshi) used fire to hold official positions, so Tao began with Shennong. The ancients attributed the invention of pottery to a certain ideal figure, although it cannot accurately explain the inventor's real age and identity, but it can explain the long history of pottery in China. Primitive pottery is mainly to meet the needs of material life, and some pottery is produced for the needs of primitive religious worship and sacrifices. Pottery producers are at the same time users and viewers. Primitive pottery is used as a practical packaging object. Its shape and decoration are completely consistent with the primitive people's lifestyle, thinking characteristics and aesthetic appreciation habits, and have a great originality. The original pottery art style is rough, profound, simple, simple, warm, clear, with distinctive characteristics of the cultural characteristics of the primitive era. A large number of bronze wares in the era of slavery served not only the material life of the slave class, but also the political and religious beliefs of the ruler, and became a symbol of sacrifices, a symbol of rank, and a symbol of power. Its utensils are characterized by vigorous, dignified and cool stamina, reflecting a well-ordered etiquette system that is neat, standardized, organized, and orderly, and ethical awareness of respecting relatives. In the long process of feudal society development, he wrote a history of packaging culture with great wisdom and exquisite craftsmanship. The magic and romance of the Warring States Period; the thick and solemn state of the Qin Dynasty; the conciseness of the Han Dynasty and the immeasurable style of the monks; the Three Kingdoms, Two Jin and South and North Dynasty, influenced by Buddhism and Western culture, and their packaging styles are “thin and lenient” and “broadhearted” in parallel; "And the "light of Buddha" is reflected. In the Tang and Tang dynasties, the “grandness and splendor” was full; the Song Dynasty was natural, rational, elegant; the Yuan Dynasty was unrestrained, rugged, and rich; the Ming Dynasty was simple and atmospheric; the fine, colorful, colorful, and customary objects of the Qing Dynasty were vivid. It embodies the spirit of national culture.

It can be seen that the Chinese nation has created splendid and rich cultural achievements. China's traditional packaging culture is broad, profound, and colorful. It has both commonalities and historical stages. At the same time, it also has social strata, ethnic diversity, and traditions. The deeper the understanding of culture is, the more emboldened it is, and the more thick its design is, it is an inexhaustible source of creativity for us. We understand Chinese culture, including packaging culture, and we must further study what is behind its splendid nature. We must inherit the essence of development. It is a fair attitude not to be overly happy with the past, but not to superficially adorn some traditional cultural forms to represent inheritance.

Third, the cultural characteristics of packaging design

People's demand for packaging design works not only meets the basic functions of use, but also has a high demand for spiritual functions. Therefore, packaging design has its own unique cultural properties and characteristics. Digging and understanding the spirit is to fully express the design connotation and develop new fields in packaging design. According to the methods of studying material culture and the characteristics of packaging design in cultural anthropology, we explore the cultural characteristics of packaging design with three elements.

1, packaging culture structure. The packaging culture structure can be understood from three levels. The first is the utensil layer, which is the sum of the packaging design activities. It is a product form that can be perceived, grasped, has a material entity, and also forms the basis of the entire packaging culture, mainly in marketing. For the purpose of integrating the creative activities of social, economic, artistic, and psychological factors, it reflects people's perception of and degree of creativity as a unity of creation and aesthetics, as well as the level of development of productive forces at a certain social stage. The second is the institutional level. Packaging design is a kind of socialization activity, and in the long-term design and production process, it has formed policies, regulations, standards, and procedures that are guaranteed and promoted. Social system norms are established in the organization and management. Although they are not directly related to cultural resources, their nature and development level are ultimately determined by the way people and cultural resources exchange energy. The third is the spiritual and cultural layer. The spiritual culture is the value concept, thinking mode, and moral sentiment cultivated by human beings in the social practice and consciousness activities for a long time. The packaging culture will specifically reflect people's requirements, desires, emotions, perceptions and judgments in the process of purchase and use. At the level of the above-mentioned three-tiered cultural structure, the artifact layer and the institutional layer are exposed to external material forms, which are easy to grasp, and the spiritual and cultural layers are reflected in the psychological depths of individual individuals and groups and are difficult to grasp. In the study of packaging culture, we must carry out dynamic research from the multi-dimensional structure and interaction of cultural forms, so as to correct our understanding of the point of view, a more profound understanding, grasping the consumer mentality of the packaging design market, and guiding our design practice.

2, the packaging function. The expression of packaging function in cultural sense can be viewed from different angles. Here it mainly refers to the relationship between people and things, the relationship between the environment formed by things and things and the relationship between people; it is the requirement of people to adapt to nature and society to the structure. This is embodied in the analysis and analysis of the two main purposes of packaging in the circulation process: product protection and sales promotion. First, use. Reasonable use can improve the use value of packaged products. Whether it is a large appliance or a small daily necessities, the rationality of its packaging needs to be considered, and it meets the human physiological criteria and mental reception requirements in ergonomics so that consumers can experience Packaging improves lifestyle and quality of life. At the same time, people's actions, experiences, and experiences accumulated through the use of their own actions will promote the creation of people's ideas and the motives of design motivation. Second, transportation. Transportation, including the displacement activities of packaging products during manufacturing, storage, and sales, such as reasonable form size and quantitative assembly, will affect the energy efficiency during the packaging and transportation process. This function requires a certain choice of materials, materials, dimensions, quality, and shape of the packaged product. Third, marketing. Mainly include regional agents, retailers to promote the sales of the purpose of the activities carried out, requiring the packaging to facilitate store and shelf storage, packaging containers can be easily used for turnover.

3, packaging form image. Mainly refers to the form, color, texture, form is the manifestation of the internal nature of things under certain conditions, including form and modality. The packaging form shows its own independent value under the premise of function and purpose. The research on packaging forms not only involves dissemination and identification, but also involves people's psychological feelings until awareness, because we see the cultural meaning of the form is the essence of the pattern extracted from the packaging style. As Arnheim stated in his book "Art and Visual Perception," "The visual image is never a mechanical copy of a perceptual material, but a creative grasp of reality. The image it grasps is rich in imagination. The image of sexuality, creativity, and acute beauty. The activities of watching the world have been proved to be the interaction between the nature of external objective things and the nature of the viewer.” Color. Color has a certain social and psychological effect, because people's perception is constant, organized, associative, and active. The psychological effect of color is the induction form that occurs between people and color. As the association of color, the concept of abstraction directly associated with color is the association of relationship and meaning. As people’s ideological methods are deeply influenced by a national culture, different societies, different environments, and different knowledge structures bring about obvious differences between people and between people and peoples. Taking yellow as an example, the eastern representative is noble and beautiful, and Western Christianity is considered shameful; if red, the eastern symbolizes warmth, auspiciousness, and positiveness, while the West symbolizes sacrifice as a battle. Material. Refers to the raw materials used in packaging design, different times and cultural backgrounds