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. The charm of the packaging design of goods becomes an important factor to promote purchase. For consumables, the promotion of packaging is particularly evident.

The visual design of the package 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., ensures that the information content is fully accurate, the appearance of the image is eye-catching, and the personality of the brand is rich.

First, the integrity of the design language expression The visual elements of the packaging design is the sum of the design, composition, color, pattern, pattern and font design. 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, ideal color, and visualization of the text, and satisfy the science, practicality, beauty, and low cost of the packaging. There are four conditions for competitiveness. Successful packaging design can often achieve three kinds of results: far-reaching effects one by one; eye-catching effects near 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 packaging design process, we must first pay attention to the overall relationship between the design elements.

Second, the design of the text on the package including the brand name, product model, specifications, quantity, quantity, batch number, use maintenance, use, production units and Pinyin or foreign languages, these introduced goods, promotional goods, an indispensable part of the important, such as chemical Instruments, instruments, medicines, food, machinery, culture, education, and education supplies are mainly identified by words. The explanatory text is an important part of packaging.

Text as a decorative technique has the meaning of beautifying the product in the design, and 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 by 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 decorated with Chinese character calligraphy. Some of them have been affixed with seals and ancient paintings and have strongly displayed 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 Product packaging should not only significantly outperform competitors on the shelves, but should 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 the customer's 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, plus the clever design of the design to make the package of goods. The outfit is more attractive.

Fourth, the abstract picture in the design uses abstract design techniques to represent the contents of specific products such as cigarettes, medicines, soap, toothpaste, detergent, mineral water, seasonings, and physiological saline, etc. Notable features. Rich in modern beauty, the form of a strong sense of abstract graphics packaging is easy for people to accept, even if there are some goods that can be represented as graphics, designers to the pursuit of packaging 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 technical means, and the special effects of 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 not like, 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 goods and successfully express the intrinsic meaning of the goods.

V. The design of painting, cartoons, and exaggerated deformation techniques With the development of packaging design, whether the packaging used in traditional painting, cartoons, and exaggerated deformation techniques has practical value, especially the increasing level of commercial photography and plate printing Today, modern packaging design does not seem to lack realistic color photographs. 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 machine cannot be expressed through photography and 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 (realistic methods using various types of paintings) and can be highly simplified, 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.

Sixth, the design of color processing When customers enter the mall to buy products, the color is often the first to enter the eyes, beautiful decent colors, can better promote products, beautify the environment, mold people's hearts, 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 sales sites.

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, and the method of strengthening or weakening, or contrasting or reconciling, can be used 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. The tonal treatment of the respective battles will inevitably lead to chaos. Therefore, it is impossible to highlight the theme and lose the sense of integrity. In particular, when contrasting colors appear on the screen, it is necessary to pay attention to the contrast between the two contrasting colors. The area size should not be too uniform, and the purity or brightness should not be too close, so as to achieve the existing contrast (including the hue, lightness and purity contrast). There is a unified feeling. 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-promotion” 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 the customer's psychology in the market, predict how consumers identify the "this" product and the "that" product in the appearance characteristics of the package, and have the visual design elements and design language to impress people's design skills.