With the revival of Chinese traditional culture and the popularity of Chinese style, Chinese traditional patterns and cultural elements see a trend of revival across the country. Those traditional have very typical artistic characteristics and strong conceptuality. Their unique forms of expression and profound connotations infuse new blood into creative packaging box design.
Why Do Traditional Patterns in Packaging Design Appeal to Chinese Consumers?
1. Historical cultural legacy
The characteristic of excellent packaging design is that it must be closely connected with the local cultural atmosphere. First of all, Chinese traditional patterns are cultural phenomenon with distinctive characteristics, have an ancient and glorious history, and deeply embodies the value of humanities and art, in a sense, it is also a natural expression of human nature. Secondly, their emergence was accompanied by the gradual evolution of feudal society and have been gradually nurtured and infiltrated by Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and other related thoughts, which gave them a secular touch, and got endowed with traditional morality, feudal ethics and other related thoughts. Therefore, traditional patterns inherited a certain degree of social and cultural functions of exorcising evil spirits, praying for blessings and advising the world.
2. Reflects a more shocking spirituality.
Most of the traditional Chinese patterns present people's inner pursuits artistically, through abstracted and poetic expression. Confucian artistic thinking in the traditional sense tends to pay more attention to the unity and harmony of social, artistic, and natural beauty, and endow art with corresponding social, moral and ethical content. The profound application of this artistic way of thinking in the meaning and expression of traditional Chinese patterns makes their artistic charm reach people’s minds. It also reflects a more shocking spirituality in the packaging design.
3. Shows deep symbolism.
Symbolism is an artistic and poetic style using symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind. The traditional Chinese patterns contain very deep symbolic meaning. For example, the combination of bat and the Chinese character "shou"(longevity) forms a particularly auspicious pattern as a whole: "five blessings holding longevity". (In Chinese, the pronunciation of bat is same as that of blessing). While the two subtly intertwined forms a beautiful pattern, it also has a particularly auspicious meaning: "pray for blessings and prolong life". This dual meaning makes its symbolism vivid and effective. This traditional Chinese pattern is widely used in some packaging designs and presents a unique symbolic meaning.
Applications
Packaging design is a product of the organic integration of culture, art and technology. The functions that modern packaging needs to perform are more than the physical product level. It increasingly needs to address the inner aesthetic needs of consumers. In order to stand out among competitors, packaging design needs to be creative image, showing a distinctive personality, and promote environmental awareness accentuating the harmony of human and the nature.
It is equally important to be people-oriented, focusing on humanized design, which deeply reflects the connotation of local culture and further highlights the regional characteristics.
Learn from the expression of traditional Chinese patterns and their specific shapes, and integrate them with product features to highlight product superiority in the context of traditional cultural heritage.
In practice, it is necessary to make full use of the imagery in the traditional patterns, so that the presentation of the connotation can be gradually extended to achieve a more profound taste and cultural depth. When using traditional patterns for packaging design, sufficient and precise knowledge of both traditional cultural concepts and modern cultural trends is required. It’s not to simply copy and imitate, but to fully reflect the cultural connotation, spiritual orientation and symbolic meaning so that the packaging is unified on the whole. For example, the Pu’er Tea gift packaging uses traditional pattern ‘auspicious clouds’ as the background and main image. It’s simple and implies blessings.
