Creating Emotional Symbols - Analysing Package Design and Consumer Behavior

Art and design are the symbolic forms of human emotions. In addition to conveying aesthetic experiences, it must also express emotions, and packaging design activities are closely related to emotions.

The packaging design conveys the designer's emotions with the help of the formed image and the creative state, so that the psychological tension can be released and relieved. At the same time, there must be someone to appreciate and accept the packaging design work, so that the emotional ability of the packaging design works with the consumer groups to communicate and exchange, the designer's psychology will be balanced and happy. Thus formed a designer - packaging works - Audience trinity formed by the emotional interaction, we can call it design emotion.

The reason why packaging design can convey people's emotions is because everything has its basic components. Such as the rise and fall of nature, aggregation and spalling, flow and solidification, the rise and decline of human society, development and regression, stability and division, human growth and aging, health and disease, birth and death, human emotions Joyfulness, pain, agitation and balance, tension and ease, etc., are all components of the social living form. When the structure of the objective thing is in line with the structure of the designer's inner emotions, the designer will be able to touch the scene and experience the strong emotions triggered by the heterogeneous isomorphism. In the heart, he will have a positive creative impulse and desire to express emotion. The emotions of the designer are used, and the elements used are still elements of composition. The designer always finds a form of expression consistent with his own inner feelings and conveys his inner feelings. We see it as the "symbolic form of emotion", that is, works of art (design works) are to present emotions for people to appreciate and be purchased by people, from emotional to visible form. It is the use of visual symbols to transform emotion into something that various types of consumers can perceive, and the dynamics of art form and our reason and emotion are isomorphic forms. Susan Lange's symbol of emotion mainly refers to the symbol of appearance. It consists of points, lines, faces, bodies, colors and textures in the constituent elements. The reason that the pictorial symbols can convey the designer's emotions is that various symbolic natures and constituent states have different visual impact structures. This is not only the formal rule of composition, but also the method and principle of emotional expression of packaging design. The constitution of the design is not the simple addition of each part, but also the key to the packaging design and the emotional expression of the designer. It is what kind of form to adopt and how to organize and select these elements so that it constitutes a complete structure and provides a complete and comprehensive The visual image, so that after each element constitutes an organic whole, it will be able to embody various artistic effects such as emotion, reason, form, and divine, producing a complete emotional atmosphere and profound spiritual experience. In the design process, both intuition and creative impulses are needed, as well as rational participation and regulation. In the constant negation and affirmation of rationality, design thinking will gradually sublimate, and designers’ emotional tendencies will become clear and have an audience. Recognized common factors make the chosen form of expression more and more appropriate and accurate. Finally, the emotional effect pursued by the designer is fully demonstrated.

In today's society, people who are labor producers are also consumers. This makes the industrial products inject into a relatively eternal vitality in the process of development. Consumer behaviors continue to stimulate production. Producers continue to adjust the original nature of packaging based on information feedback in marketing to adapt to changing consumer demands. . 140 years ago, goods sold in Western stores were unpackaged. After the industrial revolution, trademark packaging appeared, but the form was very simple. After 1920, small packaging products appeared. There has also been a major change in the form of expression. Consumers can know at a glance what product it is, but at the time they only used lithographic technology. Decades later, supermarkets emerged and products were abundant, while packaging production and design also became modern. In this evolving process, packaging has gone from simple product identification to the creation of emotional symbol designs.

As an objective product in the socio-economic environment, the purpose of packaging design is to serve humanity. It is the use of appropriate emotional visual language and scientific and technical means of expression to create the objective entities that people need in life and work. It constitutes new consumption patterns of emotions and people, people (consumers) and design, design and products, products and markets, markets and economy, economy and society.

The goal of design is to be able to fully serve its products during production, marketing, and consumption. With the proliferation of product categories and the change in consumer attitudes, packaging design has become a medium between products and consumption. Consumers have a good impression on the forms that match their own mentality, and they also generate trust in the products. Based on such a consumer psychology process, consumers are provided with interesting visual and tactile contents, and appropriate emotional symbols are created to achieve sales promotion.

It can be seen that designers should express their emotions through packaging. This is a creative process. Designers put their emotions, aesthetic tastes, and innovative ideas through the process of designing thinking and using packaging as a special carrier to express their inner thoughts and ideas to form a specific and visible form of expression in order to obtain audiences. Emotional and rational resonance.

Emotional creation in packaging design includes two basic aspects. First, designers create new features that can be intuitively perceived in terms of form, structure, material, color, and form. Second, it refers to the real object created by the designer out of nothing. Apart from having the above listed content, it should also include new ideas, new thinking, new ideas, and new ideas in the designer's mind. These new ideas are the natural pursuit of artistic pursuits and emotional qualities of designers. Most of them are only imaginable and sentimental. They are illusions. This is the highest realm of creation. It is also the connotation and essence of packaging design innovation, and the characteristics of artistic creation are not Seek cooperation. Susan Lange once stated: "Artists' work habits are customarily called creation. The difference between creation and other types of production activities is that it is a specific spatial structure." We say that the artistic image is a This kind of illusion only means that the artistic image is immaterial. That is to say, it is not composed of things such as paper and color, but is a space composed of shapes that balance each other, and dynamic relations are contained in these shapes. This space is not the same as the actual space, because there is no such image with a certain organizational structure in the actual space. In short, design space is a symbolic space, and its appeal to the visual organizational structure is a vivid symbol of emotional expression. In packaging design, the essence of innovation lies in the perfect combination of the expression of emotional personality of the designer and the beauty of the form. Only the packaging design of the form of transformation without spiritual content is designed only for design, but only emphasizes expression while ignoring the pursuit of formal beauty and the law. Packaging designers will only be intoxicated with their own world, and their works are hard to accept.

If the innovation of art is only the conscious demand of the designer, it is the designer looking for fresh artistic language to create a "new and meaningful form", then the innovation of packaging design is not only so, it is also the inevitable requirement of the times. Packaging is always the most obvious and meaningful symbol of an era. It not only reflects the social background and economic conditions at that time, but also expresses the spiritual connotation and aesthetic trend of this era. The innovation of packaging design therefore has a profound humanistic significance.

The design must have the best visual communication capabilities from the manufacturer to the consumer and should satisfy all consumer information requirements. Design is a tool for information transmission. Using the best emotional information to convey this method will effectively improve its function. Design is not simply for the sake of art, but also for creating more sales opportunities.

â–  Jian Jianye

Source: "Decoration"