Visual Elements in Modern Packaging Design

The original purpose of the packaging is to ensure that the goods are not damaged during transportation and are easy to store. Modern packaging, in addition to accomplishing these basic goals, has gradually become an integral part of product design. With the intensification of commodity competition and people’s increasing demand for personalized goods, the role of packaging has become increasingly apparent. Excellent packaging design can increase the value of goods and induce consumer's desire to purchase. With the popularization and development of the circulation mechanism of supermarkets, customers can choose their own shopping, and the charm of product packaging design becomes an important factor to promote purchase. For consumables, the promotion of packaging is particularly evident.

The visual design of the packaging has the same and similar design methods and steps as other visual communication designs. The packaging design must also be based on market research. It should be positioned from three aspects: the producer, the commodity, and the sales target. The appropriate packaging material should be selected. The packaging structure should be designed first, and then the text should be provided according to the layout of the packaging structure. The design of visual elements, such as logos, images, etc., enables the content of the information to be fully accurate, and the appearance of the image is eye-catching and full of personality characteristics of the brand.

First, the integrity of the design language expression

The visual elements in packaging design are the sum of the shapes, compositions, colors, patterns, patterns, and fonts. The shape determines the skeletal genre of the package, the composition reflects the image style of the package, the color represents the mental outlook of the package, and the font directly reflects the essence of the content of the package. Therefore, the composition, color, and font of the packaging design should be conceived at the same time, complement each other, achieve functionalization of the modeling, specialization of the composition, color idealization, text visualization, and satisfy the science, practicality, aesthetics, and low cost of the packaging. There are four conditions for competitiveness. Successful packaging design can often achieve three effects: far-reaching effects one by one; eye-catching effects one by one; long-term effects - impressive. At the same time, successful packaging design must also have five basic points: 1 shelf impression: a good design can make the goods on the shelves for customers to play a strong attraction; 2 readability: the text on the package should be clear and easy to read Product description should be simple and straightforward, at a glance; 3 Appearance patterns: appearance patterns should be beautiful, eye-catching, metaphorical and artistic and can be successful; 4 trademark impression: trademark to be concise and clear, a look can leave a deep impression ;5 Features Description: Product features, features, open methods, precautions, etc. should also be shown in plain and simple text. With the above five basic points of design, consumers will put it down. Therefore, in the process of packaging design, we must first pay attention to the overall relationship between the design elements.

Second, the design of the text

The words on the package include brand names, product models, specifications and components, quantity and batch number, use and maintenance, methods of use, production units and Pinyin or foreign languages, etc. These are important parts of the introduction of goods and promotional goods, such as chemicals, meters, medicines, foods. , mechanical, cultural and educational supplies are mainly identified by text, indicating that the text is an important part of the package.

As a decorative technique, text has the meaning of beautifying the product in the design. It should be based on the premise of expressing the characteristics of the product. The decorative methods of writing are different, and it is easy to arouse the customer's resonance, imagination, and memory with the combination of products. When used properly, they can also win with cleverness and make people feel unique. As long as the reasonable design is based on the characteristics of the product, it can show individuality and all kinds of new ideas, whether it is combined with other forms or used alone.

Our great Chinese nation has thousands of years of cultural heritage. Traditional Chinese calligraphy is an art itself. In recent years, many of our country's works as the main body of packaging design have also been successful. In particular, local products and special gifts have been used to decorate with Chinese characters calligraphy. Some have added seals and ancient paintings to strongly display the national style. We look at Japan's packaging and decorating design, we can see that calligraphy packaging is also quite popular in Japan. All in all, the function of decorative words should be fully mobilized to enhance and enrich design effects.

Third, the use of commercial photography

Commodity packaging should not only clearly outperform competitors on the shelves, but should also quickly reflect the content of the goods. In food, glassware, ceramic products, exquisite work products, toys, etc., people pay more and more attention to the "realistic" image, and customers are eager to go through packaging to see at a glance the actual product image. If the package can not be fulfilled, the customer will not pick it out, that is, if the contents of the package are not displayed in an appropriate manner, the product will no one cares.

The packaging design using commercial photography techniques in the modern international market is increasing day by day. It conforms to the emergence and development of self-service sales methods in the international market, conforms to customer requirements to "truely" understand the psychology of products, and conforms to the requirements of socialized large-scale industrial production. Make the packaging design with intuitive, fast and accurate reflection of the internal content, and its image, texture, color to achieve the perfect point, even beyond the scope of the original product. Modern technology and the ever-evolving electronic plate-making printing process have provided packaged visual communication design with a higher material means than true-to-life expression, coupled with the clever design of the design to make the package of goods. The outfit is more attractive.

Fourth, the design of the abstract picture

The use of abstract design techniques to represent the contents of specific products such as cigarettes, medicines, soaps, toothpaste, detergents, mineral water, spices, and physiological saline is a distinctive feature of the world's packaging modern design. Rich in modern beauty, the abstract form of graphics packaging is very easy for people to accept, even if some of the goods that can be represented as graphics, designers for the pursuit of the packaging of the visual effects of the difference and modern beauty, often using abstract design.

With the development of science and technology, computers have been widely used in various fields. The special effects produced by or exhibited by these modern technological means, such as special rules and irregular geometric patterns, have extraordinary geometric shapes, and are not Regular color sensations, special three-dimensional feelings, profound senses, etc., use this abstract language to create special visual effects with visual effects that are both like and unlike, visually expressing electric waves, sound waves, frequencies, amplitudes, and energy. Gathering, incombination and decomposition of matter and other invisible things. In order to achieve the expression of the connotation of the product, "visual perception."

Of course, the abstract graphics also have a purely decorative effect on the packaging, but it is generally a design with a certain meaning. Its function not only gives people a sense of modern beauty, but also creates a subtle, artistic conception that can make people associate with the product and successfully express the intrinsic meaning of the product.

V. Paintings, cartoons, and exaggerated deformations in design

With the development of packaging design, whether the packaging used for painting, cartoons, and exaggerated morphological design in the past has practical value, especially with the increasing level of commercial photography and plate printing, modern packaging design seems to lack the realistic color photo. . It seems that the form of painting has lost its practical utility. However, viewing the current status of the world's packaging, including some brand-name packaging, are still making full use of the vast imagination, expressiveness of painting, cartoons, and exaggerated deformation techniques to pursue the specific themes and personality characteristics of some commodity packaging. Some images of foreign alien toy packages, imaginary characters, ancient heroes, and Hercules in the packaging of the spaceman's game console cannot be expressed through photography or other forms, but can only be expressed in the form of drawing. At the same time, the form of painting is not limited by mechanical conditions, is not constrained by time and space, and has a variety of flexibility. It can be highly realistic, and it can be highly simplified using various kinds of painting methods, and can be exaggerated. Based on the content needs of the product and the need for design concepts, the designer's creative ability is fully utilized. The expressiveness of various artistic techniques can inevitably lead to different visual effects.

VI. Color Processing in Design

When customers enter the mall to buy products, the color is often the first to enter the eye, beautiful decent colors, can better promote products, beautify the environment, mold the hearts of people, this is the power of color. The use of packaging colors is closely linked to the design and composition of the entire screen design. The color of the package requires planarization and leveling. This is the filtering, refining, and high-level summary of color. It is required to play a greater imagination based on the general visual color. It is based on people's connections and habits of color, and carries out a high degree of exaggeration and discoloration. It is a specialty of packaging art. At the same time, the color of packaging design must also be constrained by the crafts, materials, uses, and places of sale.

The main color of packaging design should be considered based on the contents, and the inherent color of the product can be used as a starting point to adopt a method of strengthening or weakening, or contrasting or reconciling, so as to better highlight the promotional effect of the product and enhance the competitiveness of the product. .

It is common for the packaging screen to deal with the background color as the main color. The other colors on the screen need to be properly arranged according to the main tone, and the color processing of the respective battles will inevitably lead to chaos. Therefore, it is impossible to emphasize the theme and lose the sense of integrity. In particular, when contrasting colors appear on the screen, it is important to note that between the two contrasting colors, the area size should not be too uniform, and the purity or brightness should not be too close, so that it can achieve both contrast and unity. Sometimes when the contrasting color is not suitable for weakening treatment, it can also be treated with black, white, gold, silver, gray and other neutral colors, which not only maintains the contrast ratio but also achieves the effect of harmonization.

The uniqueness of packaging design is closely related to market competition. In the product promotion business, besides the role of advertising, the uniqueness of product packaging design is very different from other products. It plays a very important role in self-advocacy throughout the delivery. Essentially, packaging design is transmitted through people's vision. Visual factors and design languages ​​are universal in the world. With the advancement of the times, the transmission of visual elements and design languages ​​is getting higher and higher, especially in countries with higher and more developed cultural levels. Words are used as advertising words. Modern technology has enabled people to transfer images directly and quickly. On the one hand, consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and their living standards are continuously improving, which makes people demand more varieties of flowers; on the other hand, the numerous goods on the market make consumers feel overwhelmed. This means that for designers, it is necessary to study more accurately, quickly, and concisely the delivery of packaging. The design effect should be immediate, so that their product packaging can quickly “approach” consumers to help manufacturers attract more customers. To understand customer psychology in the market, predict how consumers identify “this” product and “that” product in the appearance characteristics of the package, and have the visual elements and design language to impress design skills