Packaging World Creative Future

In May, Shencheng, Baihua Zhengyan and Chi Green City, ushered in the 9th China International Bakery Exhibition in such a time full of vitality and creativity.

For the first time, this exhibition added a new content: "2006 China and abroad baked new concept packaging design boutique exhibition" and "Li Lifu cup packaging design creativity contest." This is one of the most popular, involved, and interactive projects in this exhibition. It can be said to be a new "bright spot." The featured area of ​​the exhibition is mainly the appreciation of excellent packaging works from over a dozen foreign countries and regions. Creative areas and boutique areas are the focus of the museum. The national baking industry and design companies have chosen to send a large number of new packaging products to the exhibition. China Bake Association invited experts from the three universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuxi to form the judging panel for this year's Design Exhibition. I was fortunate enough to be invited to serve as a judge and to participate in and be responsible for the review. Not only were the number of participating works more than that, but the level was high, creating a new high for the bakery packaging design exhibition. The three school judges admired the non-design industry and were able to professionally and standardly operate this large-scale design exhibition. During the review, we determined that the basic principles of creativity, thematicity, aesthetics, and production level should be taken into account, and the factors such as structure, materials, environmental protection, and policies should be taken into consideration. A combination of review and discussion should be adopted to truly achieve “fairness, fairness, and openness”. The judges conducted a review in a highly responsible manner and carefully scrutinized every piece of work, each package surface, and the internal structure of the package. After repeated selection and review, 40 award-winning works were selected from more than 600 works, among which the Gold Award 2 There were 3 silver medals, 6 bronze medals, and 29 excellent prizes.

The current participation works are generally of a higher standard. There are many places in creative ideas, performance techniques, artistic effects, and printing techniques, which represent the current level of Chinese food packaging design. The award-winning works can be said to be excellent products, reflecting a strong creative and forward-looking, I hope these works will have a certain guiding role in the future of the packaging design.

Through the current visits and exchanges, I personally think that in the next few years, the packaging design of China's bake industry will show the following five trends:

1. Stress packaging strategy

Packaging design occupies a very important position in the brand image strategy. Therefore, designers must take brand strategy, marketing strategy and product strategy to guide packaging design from the perspective of brand planning, marketing, and consumer psychology. In the high-level forum of this year's exhibition and competition, some experts also clearly stated that "there is a strategy after designing first" and "good planning can sell even if there is no advertisement" and so on. Practice has shown that packaging strategy and packaging design are closely related, and it is the relationship between guidance and implementation. There will be no market for isolated designs that have nothing to do with the overall strategy. There are many works in the exhibition that clearly demonstrate its planning, and the market prospects are promising; some of the works are not award-winning and the design is not in place.

2. Highlight design ideas

Creativity is to have a new creative idea that is inspiring, associative, metaphorical, and subtle. The creativity embodied in the design can refresh people's visual experience and consumption experience, and generate powerful visual impact and brand-new consumption value. Creativity permeates the cultural taste into the commodity, and integrates the cultural meaning at the material level. Good creative design should create value for market development. This value is the added value of the product.

For example, the moon cake package of the gold medal “Moon and Moon Reunion” uses a combination of Chinese characters and openings to create continuous surprises for users, giving people multiple enjoyments such as aesthetics, pleasure, and culture. The "Bayuren" moon cakes are packaged in a box-shaped box with a multi-faceted drawer-type opening, which has a very good display effect. If this idea is packaged for the real estate industry, it will be very distinctive. The "New Maiyue Mooncake" packaging container is bionic as a bean, vivid and simple and lovely, exquisite small flowers and weeds, green tint, all just convey the meaning of the rural field. Such ideas are very suitable for the popular trend of returning to nature.

3. Pay attention to structural research

The packaging function is mainly reflected in the convenience of transportation, display, and product protection. These functions are closely related to the choice of structure, materials, and processes. In fact, the true meaning of packaging is not just a popular “surface article”. The relevant survey data shows that one third of China’s urban waste is discarded packaging. The environmental pollution caused by excessive packaging, energy waste and shocking, packaging designers should take up social responsibility for this.

In the exhibition's works, many good works appeared in the research of packaging structure. If the packaging design of dumplings, the combination of green leaves and box body, naturally forming openings, plus red seals, fresh and natural. This clever structure not only saves material but also is convenient, and it not only conforms to the characteristics of content but also shows traditional cultural features. The "Bread Story" series was well received by the judges. Its design was simple and international, and it attached great importance to innovative research on box shapes and structures. Structure, materials and technology are the essence of the concept of packaging, and it will surely be more and more concerned by the whole society.

4. Pursuit of diverse styles

With the development of science and technology and culture, the information society and the era of pluralism, food packaging design is also constantly updated with the changes of the times. Traditional image information, transmission methods and interpretation methods have been unprecedentedly impacted, and forms and colors rapidly form the expression language and aesthetic form unique to new technologies. With the rapid improvement of people's cultural quality, a group of excellent packaging works and excellent designers with artistic tastes and cultural connotations as well as strong personality styles are constantly emerging. A time of ever-changing and colorful new packaging design has arrived!

In this exhibition, tradition and modernity, East and West, exquisite and simple, all do their best. Just as some designers summed up the "pleasing, truth-seeking, seeking new, seeking the United States, seeking letters, seeking differences, seeking interest" and other diverse styles and effects coexist. Many well-known domestic designers, design companies and packaging products companies also participated in this exhibition, but some did not send the latest and best works, their concerns about "piracy" and imitation are also understandable. I have visited several secret exhibitions. There are indeed many remarkable and exciting works. However, I was sorry to have failed to participate in the review.

5. Strengthen green awareness

The nature-based, green-based calls are getting louder and louder. How to use packaging resources reasonably and effectively, minimizing packaging waste, and effectively implementing the 4R principle of reduction, reuse, recycling, and regeneration are our present and The serious issues that we will face in the future.

From the exhibiting works, we can see that the environmental awareness of designers has been continuously strengthened, and we have not seen the appearance of harmful and prohibited materials. The policies of "packaging and thinning" introduced this time are all to strengthen the awareness of green packaging and improve the sense of responsibility for environmental protection. A large number of foreign excellent packaging design works and related experiences in the special exhibition area are worth learning and drawing lessons from. They are simple in style, rational in structure, and eco-friendly. In contrast, we still have many gaps.

The successful holding of the exhibition will certainly give impetus to China's bake industry packaging and packaging design. At the same time, we also let everyone see gaps and inadequacies: Over-luxury old faces still occupy a large proportion of packaging design work. I initially remembered that more than 70% of the more than 600 participating works used gilding, printing silver, and Light and other technological effects. Blindly catering to the market and low-level aesthetic interests is the key to the difficulty of raising the level of some works. Some of the works focus on the expression of traditional culture, but they are not sufficiently refined, have a shallow connotation, and are imitative to each other. Some well-known brands have traditional elements, but the style is not creative. The phenomenon of focusing on lightness, light weight, light weight, light weight, and light weight is still prominent, and there is still some distance from the international level. For the resolution of such problems, this exhibition is a concentrated reminder and powerful promotion.

Author: Associate Professor Chen Xinhua Wuxi Jiangnan University School of Design

Reprinted from: Oriental Bake Network