The original purpose of packaging was merely to prevent damage to the goods during transportation and facilitate storage. However, modern packaging, in addition to fulfilling these basic purposes, has gradually become an indispensable part of product design. With the intensification of commodity competition and the increasing demand for personalized goods, the role of packaging has become increasingly prominent. Excellent packaging design can enhance the value of the goods, stimulate consumers' desire to purchase, and with the widespread development of the super-mall circulation mechanism, the charm of packaging design has become an important factor in promoting purchases. For consumable goods, the promotional effect of packaging is particularly obvious.
In terms of visual design in packaging, it shares similarities and commonalities with other visual communication designs. Packaging design must also be based on market research, positioning from three aspects: the producer of the goods, the goods themselves, and the target consumers, and select appropriate packaging materials. First, the packaging structure is designed, and then based on the appearance layout provided by the packaging structure, the visual elements such as text, logo, and image are arranged and designed to ensure that the information content is fully and accurately presented, the appearance image is eye-catching and pleasing, and it has the distinctive characteristics of the brand.
1. The overallity of design language expression
The visual elements in packaging design are the sum of form, composition, color, pattern, motif, and font. Form determines the skeletal structure of the packaging, composition reflects the image style of the packaging, color represents the spirit of the packaging, and font directly reflects the essence of the packaging content. Therefore, the composition, color, and font in packaging design should be conceived simultaneously, complementing each other, to achieve functionalization of form, specialization of composition, idealization of color, and imageization of text, and to meet the four conditions of packaging: scientific and practical, beautiful and meaningful, low cost, and competitive. Successful packaging design often achieves three effects: distant effect - attracting attention; near effect - captivating; long-lasting effect - leaving a deep impression. At the same time, successful packaging design must possess five basic points: ① Shelf impression: a good design can make the goods have a strong attractive effect on customers on the shelf; ② Readability: the text on the packaging should be clear and easy to read, and the product description should be simple and direct, clear at a glance; ③ Appearance pattern: the appearance pattern should be beautiful and elegant, eye-catching, with strong metaphorical and artistic qualities to be successful; ④ Trademark impression: the trademark should be concise and clear, leaving a deep impression at a glance; ⑤ Function and feature description: the functions, features, unpacking methods, and precautions of the product should also be expressed through simple and clear graphics and text. A design with these five basic points will make consumers love it and not want to put it down. Therefore, in the process of packaging design, it is necessary to first pay attention to the overall relationship of the design elements.
2. Text in design
Text on packaging includes brand name, product name, product model, specifications, ingredients, quantity, batch number, usage and maintenance, usage method, production unit, pinyin or foreign language, etc. These are important parts indispensable for introducing and promoting the goods, such as for chemicals, instruments, medicines, food, machinery, and educational and cultural supplies, mainly relying on text for identification. The explanatory text is an important part of packaging.
Text as a decorative technique has the significance of beautifying the product in design. It should be based on the expression of the product characteristics. The decorative handling methods of text vary, and when combined with the product, it can evoke the resonance, imagination, and memory of customers, and when used appropriately, it can also win by being ingenious, making people feel unique. As long as the design is reasonable and appropriate based on the characteristics of the product, whether combined with other forms or used alone, it can express the personality and various new ideas of the packaging.
Our great Chinese nation has a cultural heritage of thousands of years, and traditional Chinese calligraphy and handwriting are themselves an art. In recent years, many of our packaging designs featuring text have also achieved success, especially for local products and special gifts, where Chinese calligraphy is used as decoration. Some even incorporate seals and ancient paintings, strongly demonstrating the ethnic style. When we look at Japanese packaging design, we can see that calligraphy packaging is quite popular in Japan as well. In conclusion, we should fully utilize the decorative beauty of text to enhance and enrich the design effect.
III. The Application of Commercial Photography
The packaging of goods should not only stand out clearly on the shelves compared to competitors, but also quickly reflect the content of the product. In areas such as food, glassware, ceramic products, exquisite handicrafts, toys, etc., people are increasingly emphasizing "realistic" images. Customers are eager to obtain a clear image of the actual product through the packaging. If the packaging fails to convey the meaning, customers will not select it, that is to say, if the content of the packaging is not displayed in an appropriate way, the product will go unnoticed.
The use of commercial photography techniques in packaging design is increasing in the modern international market. It conforms to the emergence and development of self-service sales methods in the international market, conforms to the psychological need of customers to "truly" understand the product, and conforms to the requirements of large-scale industrial production. The packaging design picture has the ability to intuitively, quickly, and accurately reflect the internal content, and reaches a perfect level in terms of image, texture, and color, even surpassing the original product. Modern technology and the increasingly developed electronic plate printing process have provided material means for visual communication design of packaging that are higher than the expression of realism. Coupled with the ingenious design concept, the product packaging becomes more charming.
IV. Abstract Pictures in Design
Using abstract design techniques to represent the contents of specific products such as cigarettes, medicines, soaps, toothpaste, laundry detergent, mineral water, seasonings, and physiological saline is a prominent feature of modern packaging design worldwide. Abstract graphic packaging with a modern aesthetic appeal and a strong sense of form is easily accepted by people. Even for some products that can be represented by concrete graphics, designers often adopt abstract design to pursue the visual effect differences and modern aesthetic appeal of the packaging.
With the increasingly rapid development of science and technology, computers have been widely used in various fields. The various special effects of the unique regular and irregular geometric patterns produced or presented by these modern technical means have extraordinary geometric form sense, irregular color blocks sense, special three-dimensionality, and depth sense. Using this abstract language, with a certain both-imagery-and-non-imagery visual effect, special visual effects are created to vividly represent electromagnetic waves, sound waves, frequencies, amplitudes, energy concentration and dispersion, and the combination and decomposition of substances. Thus, the "visual perception" of the product's connotation is achieved.
Of course, abstract graphics also have the purely decorative function without definite meaning in packaging, but they are generally designed with certain meanings. Their functions, in addition to providing modern aesthetic appeal, also create an effect that is subtle and full of artistic conception, allowing people to have associations related to the product. Successfully expressing the internal meaning of the product.
V. Design Techniques of Painting, Cartoon, and Exaggerated Transformation
With the development of packaging design, are the packaging designs that used to frequently adopt painting, cartoon, and exaggerated transformation techniques still practical? Especially with the continuous improvement of commercial photography and plate printing technology, modern packaging design seems to lack realistic color photos. It seems that the painting form has lost its practical utility. However, when browsing the current packaging of various countries, including some famous brand packaging, they are still fully utilizing the broad imagination, expression ability of painting, cartoon, and exaggerated transformation techniques to pursue specific themes and individual characteristics of some product packaging. In the packaging of some alien toys, space heroes' game consoles, and ancient heroes, strongmen, etc., the depicted figures, ancient heroes, etc. cannot be expressed through photography or other forms, but can only be conveyed through painting. Moreover, the painting form is not restricted by mechanical conditions, time, or space, and has diverse flexibility. It can be highly realistic (using various realistic painting methods) or highly simplified, or even exaggerated ingeniously. Based on the content requirements of the product and the design concept, the designer's creativity can be fully exerted. And the expressive power of various artistic techniques can achieve a wide variety of visual effects.
VI. Color Processing in Design
When customers enter the mall to purchase products, color often enters their eyes first. Beautiful and appropriate colors can better promote the product, beautify the environment, and cultivate people's souls. This is the manifestation of the power of color. The application of packaging colors is closely linked to the conception and composition of the entire picture design. The packaging color requires flatness and uniformity. This is the filtering, refinement, and high-level generalization of colors. It should be based on general visual colors and exert greater imagination. It is based on people's connections and habits of color, with high exaggeration and color variation, which is a specialty of packaging art. At the same time, the color of packaging design must also be restricted by technology, materials, usage, and sales locations, etc.
The main color of packaging design should be considered based on the contents. It can start from the inherent color of the product and use strengthening or weakening techniques, or contrast or harmony, to better highlight the promotional effect of the product and enhance the competitiveness of the product.
The packaging picture often uses the background color as the main color for processing. Other colors on the picture need to be appropriately arranged according to the main color. Independent color processing is bound to lead to disorder, which will make it impossible to highlight the theme and lose the overall sense. Especially when contrasting colors appear on the picture, attention should be paid to the fact that the areas of the two contrasting colors should not be too consistent, and the purity or brightness should not be too close, so as to achieve both contrast (including hue, brightness, and purity contrast) and a sense of unity. Sometimes when the contrasting colors cannot be weakened, black, white, gold, silver, gray, etc. neutral colors can be used as borders to handle, which not only maintains the contrast of the colors but also achieves a harmonious and unified effect.
The uniqueness of packaging design is closely related to market competition. In product promotion business, in addition to the role of advertising, using the uniqueness of packaging design to distinguish other products is very important. It plays a very important "self-promotion" role in the entire transmission. Essentially, packaging design is transmitted through people's vision. Visual elements and design language are universal, and with the advancement of the times, the level of transmission of visual elements and design language is getting higher and higher. Especially in countries with higher cultural levels and developed economies, the use of text as advertising words is becoming less and less. Modern technology enables people to directly and quickly transmit images. On one hand, consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and their living standards are constantly improving, which makes people demand more varieties of colors and styles; on the other hand, there are too many products on the market, making consumers confused. For designers, they need to study more accurately, quickly, and concisely to transmit the packaging, and the design effect should be immediate, so that their product packaging can quickly "reach" consumers to help manufacturers attract more customers. To understand the psychology of customers in the market, predict how customers distinguish "this" product from "that" product based on the appearance features of the packaging, and possess the design skills that can touch people with visual elements and design language.
