“Since the industrial revolution, the design of containers for product packaging is no longer limited to the basic functions of basic clothing, ease of transportation, and promotion of sales. The design of symbolic value of containers or the enhancement of aesthetic functions of products has become an important design principle. People realize that from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, every specific society is naturally divided into several classes. Each class has its own unique way of life. This unique way of life is often endemic, in addition to language and behavior. Products, such as clothing for everyday use, wear, use, utensils worn, accessories for walking, etc., are used as a symbol of materialization.In addition to the functions they should possess, there should be a product that seems to have no practical value. Symbolic function, and this function must also be transformed into some kind of value."
In such a context of design, designers designing every piece of container work are painstakingly trying to satisfy their users' symbolic value needs. If we abandon the design factors to restore the container itself, is it difficult for us to find the symbolic value of the container itself? In fact, once each kind of thing has participated in the process of human use, its symbolic value has also taken place in its process of embodying its use value.
An image advertisement propaganda piece of the US “Time Magazine†won the Silver Award at the 03rd Cannes Advertising Festival. The title of the work is Bottle. From the picture in this commercial, and then linked to real life, it really triggered our thinking about the symbolic value of a common glass bottle. The same glass bottle, as its shape changes and its users change, the symbolic value attached to it also illusions many manifestations.
A small glass bottle first appeared as a baby bottle. In the first phase after birth, it became the container object that the baby first came into contact with. In the memory of all the children who used the bottle, its role was far more than the image of its milk, so many people In adulthood, I still feel the feeling of holding a bottle to suck. Because the things it brings to the children, in addition to the contents of the living material, are to a greater extent replaced the role of the mother, and are symbols that enable the baby's biological reflexes and psychological feelings to be satisfied.
Like a baby's birth, the voyage of a maiden's voyage also requires an initial drive to get it into the water. Until today, people in many western countries still retain a tradition of praying for good luck with a bottle of champagne during the launch of the new boat. When the bottle hits the ship's side under the influence of the ropes, along with the cheers of the people, the ship gained initial momentum and slowly drew the dock and sailed to the sea. At this moment, what people are concerned about is far beyond a glass bottle, no longer concerned with what brand it is and how long it has been stored. Scraps of broken glass shattered people's expectations and encouragement for new ships. It was a symbol of courage.
With encouragement and expectation, the glass bottles went into the halls of art and appeared on the canvases of the masters. In many masterpiece paintings, I can see its presence, either elegant or absurd, or figurative or abstract. When an ordinary glass bottle is turned into a surreal cucumber in the picture, a gentleman's dog is anthropomorphized to the top of the bottle, and the glass bottles appearing in such pictures are no longer themselves. In the sense of the bottle, the painter gives it a visual symbol with a specific meaning and has more symbolic meaning. The bottle at this time can play the role of metaphor and metonymy at the same time. The audience will see its appearance in the picture in an abstract and metaphorical way. Because the painters give the bottle itself a symbolic content, the bottle that actually appears in the picture is rarely seen as a real bottle. This is a representation of ideology in an almost idealistic way because people unconsciously and consciously acknowledge the introspective characteristics of the painter represented by the bottle. But at the same time, it has its own unique advantage that it can not only be visually represented as a unique and homogeneous entity, but also attractive to people who accept it because people can give it so many different Meaning so much that they can find rich content in it.
Scattered glass not only went into the halls of art, but was also used by construction workers on the walls. The sharp pieces of glass shone in the sunlight and it blocked not only the interior and exterior of a wall, but also an ordinary high wall. It became chilling because of the appearance of glass fragments. This is a symbolic symbol and it is warning. Who tried to pass it. At the moment, its form is no longer complete. As a collection of innumerable pieces, is it another expression of “splashing†and “constituting†in the language of design?
Of course, glass bottles also appear in people's lives as a noble identity. The famous Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle is their outstanding representative. We can believe without any doubt that it is an endorsement of identity and taste. It uses unique label symbols to describe how its users are extraordinary. Of course, this privilege of perfume bottle is based on its extraordinary design and visual symbols, which is a prerequisite for obtaining users. When this interaction between objects and people reaches a certain degree, the glass perfume bottle has already deviated from its own definition and has risen to a symbolic symbol that makes blondes (including deliberately dyed blonde hair). ) Crazy for it. Once the perfume bottle comes into the hands of these crazy people, the design quality contained in it is no longer the core embodiment of symbolic value.
What we call “crazy†is just a vocabulary in the general sense. When it reaches the peak, it is violence and war. The radical Palestinian people, who appear to be terrorists in the regimes of many western countries, are in the eyes of ordinary Palestinian civilians longing for peace. They are freedom fighters, and this was Israel’s independence from the British colonial rule many years ago. No two. In the hands of these freedom fighters, ordinary glass bottles became their weapons for national independence. Glass bottles were made into burning flasks and thrown to the other side to stop them. It may seem to us that such original "weapons" do not seem to pose much threat to the fully armed Israeli military police, but it is a signal to all ordinary Palestinian civilians. If the image of the freedom fighter masked in an Arab turban is a manifestation of the Pakistani people’s struggle for national independence a few years ago in the big picture, we can even allow him to hold the Palestinian flag while also holding it to reflect the civilian resistance. Conscious glass burning bottle, because it is a manifestation of civilian resistance to the will, is the most direct and effective implementation method in an unequal power competition, aestheticism and rendering are no longer suitable for the performance of this unique rebellious spirit.
After the years of blood and fire are getting quieter, what remains is the memory of hurt and pain. On cold winter nights, wandering people in the streets wrap up their own unique clothes. No one ever cares where they come from and where they are. In the streets of the slums of slums, besides the flames lit in the abandoned petrol tanks, only half a bottle of wine, which is not known, can temporarily disperse the chill of the tramp. Perhaps shortly after the dryness of the wine, another lonely soul will rise to heaven to continue to search for their ideal home. At this time, the glass bottles began to shine with human brilliance and shine their souls to fly to heaven. In a sense, the bottle has achieved its greatest value at this moment, and it has become the ultimate comfort for human beings. It is far more successful than the icing on the cake!
Now people are already accustomed to the things around them. If they can put aside their prejudices to rediscover it, a small glass bottle will carry enough for us to reflect on. The objects of the world have different characteristics, some are the characteristics of the elements, such as cold and heat, dry and wet, they have been integrated into the material itself; while others, such as brightness, color, shape, and proportion, belong to the order of high-order things. Both have a close connection with the concept of human consciousness. The symbolic value of the container is reflected in people's inadvertently, this symbolic value can not feel its existence through intuition, just as the unborn baby can be affected by the mother’s image seen during pregnancy. It is influenced by the psychological image of the mother.
Art metaphor Grosse likes to describe "decoration in the early stages of development was only of a minor artistic nature. The pleasing form was just attached to the actual important state and was like a rattan's tendril attached to a branch, but later The dense green leaves and flowers of Fujiki are concealed, and the secondary decorations gradually lose their original meaning and they develop into a purely beautiful form.
This metaphor seems to mirror the current wave of packaging design. The biggest achievement of China's design for more than 20 years may have been to arouse people's attention to design. In the fierce competition of product homogeneity, packaging design has naturally been taken seriously. Under the premise that designs gradually play a protagonist role in the competition of commodities, all sorts of packaging designs that should have been attached to the products have gone beyond the products themselves to become the biggest selling point. Buying a beggar is no longer an aphrodisiac allegory, but it is a model of pride. But from another perspective, packaging design as a sublimation of packaging aesthetics has the effect of further improving product quality, but it cannot substitute for the use value and symbolic value of the design reference itself. Excessive pure beauty forms can only place too much burden on the product itself, and it is also a harm to the symbolic value of the container.
Source: Glass Global Network