Posters of Traditional Culture —— How to Design Posters of China Folk Culture _ Poster Design of Traditional Culture
1. Inheriting history and culture: Chinese style illustrations reflect the origin and essence of China's Millennium culture, and show the profound understanding and love of China people for history and culture.
2. Carry forward the national spirit: Chinese style illustrations emphasize the cultural self-confidence and national spirit of the Chinese nation by depicting traditional culture, folk activities, myths and legends and other elements.
3. Advocating eco-environmental protection: Some Chinese style illustrations also involve social issues such as eco-environmental protection and animal protection, calling on the public to pay attention to environmental protection and sustainable development.
4. Convey emotion and thinking: Chinese style illustrations have strong emotion and thinking, and often express the author's unique insights and feelings about life, emotion and life through images, colors and lines.
5. Enriching visual culture: As a unique art form, Chinese style illustration can not only enrich visual culture, but also provide important design reference and material basis for other art forms such as literature, film and television.
In a word, Chinese illustration is an important manifestation of China traditional culture, with rich cultural background and humanistic spirit, and it is also one of the important means to promote China culture and traditional art.
How to design China folk culture poster _ traditional culture poster design I. Cultural differences and identity
Culture is not a fixed concept. The form of culture is complex and changeable, and the cultures of all ethnic groups have their own characteristics, which are constantly changing under the influence of internal and external factors. Nevertheless, we can still grasp the connection points and commonalities between the cultures of all ethnic groups and the cultures of the times from the complex cultural phenomena and forms. Culture is enjoyed by * *, and it is the ideal, value and code of conduct enjoyed by members of a specific group. However, culture can also be learned. People grow up with culture, and the cultures of different groups can also form an intersection. We always emphasize that we are in an era of global integration, and the cultures of various countries and nationalities are also influenced and infiltrated with this change, and this cultural exchange is finally implemented in all aspects of life. For example, despite the different religious beliefs between China and the West, most people in China do not understand the teachings of Christianity, which does not prevent us from taking a holiday in the name of Christmas; Although westerners probably don't know the difference between the solar calendar and the lunar calendar, it doesn't affect them to enjoy the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival with overseas Chinese all over the world.
Second, the cultural differences and identity reflected in poster design
Posters are also called "posters" and "posters", and the English name is "poster", which refers to printed advertisements posted on cardboard, walls, large wooden boards or vehicles, or printed advertisements displayed in other ways. It is the main form of outdoor advertising and one of the oldest forms of advertising. Some people interpret the meaning of posters according to their root structure and anecdotes, and think that posters are converted from "posts", which means posts, so posters refer to all notices posted on posts. No Chinese dictionary has given a special explanation to the word "poster", but it is said that during the Qing Dynasty, foreigners used foreign goods carried by sea ships to dock at the coastal wharf in China, and posted posters in conspicuous places along the street of the wharf to promote their own goods. Coastal citizens call this poster. If this development continues, all posters with similar purposes and other information will be called "posters" in the future.
(A) the phenomenon of cultural identity in posters
The transmission of culture is based on symbols, for example, language is the most important symbol. With the help of language, culture can be passed down from generation to generation and spread to a wider range. According to different senses, symbols can be divided into auditory symbols, visual symbols and tactile symbols. Language belongs to auditory symbols, words belong to visual symbols, and graphics and images are also important visual symbols. Posters have the characteristics of large screen, extensive publicity content, rich artistic expressions and strong long-distance visual effects. They are excellent carriers of cultural communication and an important part of graphic design works. It is widely spread because of its rich content, clear theme expression, diverse communication channels, simple display and no excessive restrictions on environmental props. Many familiar international graphic designers have outstanding representative works in this field. Many international graphic design competitions are also conducted through this form of expression. Seven consecutive international college students' anti-fur poster design competitions were held, requiring participants to use original poster works to guide consumers to think about the moral issues of fur clothing. When we appreciate the outstanding design works that won the final prize, it is not difficult to find that similar ideas or similar graphic elements are often used in poster works from different countries, that is to say, college students from different countries, different cultural backgrounds, different educational backgrounds and different growth environments have certain similarities in the choice of ideas and materials. For example, in the fifth competition in 2007, the theme of the competition was: victims of fashion. Three winning works in China have hanger elements, and one winning work in the United States and Canada has hanger creative elements. This phenomenon shows that at the beginning of design, when Chinese and foreign students choose the elements of poster creation, they invariably associate fashion with clothes hangers, and adopt some forms of expression in their poster design works, such as shooting in kind, drawing sketches by hand or forming different graphics.
In the historical process of increasingly close global economic ties, political and cultural exchanges between people of all countries have become increasingly frequent, forming an interdependent relationship to a certain extent. As a designer, I always hope that my works can be widely spread and understood and accepted by more people. So I often use graphic elements that most people can accept and understand. The second "East-West" International Poster Biennale for College Students won the gold medal. It is an anti-war poster named "warm", with the English word "War" written in the center of the background, next to a broken heart, which looks like a pair of little wings with a halo, just like a bloody angel. There is a row of key words at the bottom of the picture: Please don't let these wings fly away. The whole picture is mottled with colors, which reminds people of the trauma caused by the war. In this bleak scene, this little red heart warms the viewer's heart and makes people feel some different tastes in the heavy. English is not our mother tongue, but it is an international language; Most people in China don't believe in Christianity, but most people can recognize the typical characteristics of angels. So this work can be interpreted by most audiences at home and abroad. It can be seen that despite growing up in different cultural and educational backgrounds, international exchanges are getting closer and closer, and now the younger generation in the East and the West are gradually converging in lifestyle, behavior habits and even ways of thinking. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for designers: on the one hand, using internationally accepted visual elements to create works can improve the communication of works and gain the understanding and recognition of most audiences in the shortest time; On the other hand, only using cultural identity to design posters will inevitably bring too many risks of creative "collapse". Therefore, it is important to grasp the "degree" between the two.
(b) The cultural differences contained in the poster make it unique.
Throughout the development of poster design, most of the poster works of internationally renowned graphic designers contain unique and personalized visual language related to their own background culture, and gradually transform it into a strong personal style, so that viewers can understand who the designer is as soon as they see the poster screen. A series of posters created by the famous Japanese designer Ichigo Tanaka for the traditional Japanese drama Nobu Drama are widely circulated. Neng Opera is the first Japanese national drama, which evolved from "Ape Music" born in the performance of temples and shrines, and is of great significance in the history of japanese theatre. Capable drama, with fewer characters, focuses on showing the plot and is a symbolic drama. The actors who play the characters in the play all wear masks, which is an important feature that distinguishes Nengju from other plays. Getting together starts with choosing a mask. Most posters of Tanaka Yiguang's energy drama take masks as the main graphics. In the way of expression, he used a large area of geometric color blocks to summarize the original complex and figurative masks and headdresses, summarized their main characteristics, and used high-purity complementary colors to create a strong visual impact. In addition to creating posters with geometric color blocks, there are some posters with characters and even strokes as the main creative elements. These characters are often the content of a chapter in a play, arranged on the screen in an array; Or split the strokes of the title of the play and distribute them in the picture without affecting the recognition; Sometimes different plays are distinguished by corresponding colors.
A large number of traditional Japanese images and ethnic elements are used in the poster design of Tanaka Yiguang, but these elements are expressed by relatively modern geometric forms. The application of complementary colors in posters creates a colorful drama world, and through clever division and spacing, it reflects the overlapping of levels, which makes the poster picture form a sense of space similar to the western perspective effect. This is an excellent embodiment of tradition and modernity, cultural differences and identity. Some people may say that now is far from Tian Yiguang's heyday, and neng opera itself is a relatively traditional cultural field, so it is inevitable that some unique national cultural symbols will appear in posters. Then, the new Iranian designer Me-hdiSaeedi is another vivid example. MehdiSaeedi's works always contain Persian characters, traditional Chinese characters and other ethnic elements. For example, the poster "Three Iranian Faces" he created for the oil painting exhibition of three Iranian female artists uses the change of Persian size and writing angle to form three interrelated female side faces, which perfectly fits the theme. He thinks that Persian characters and Latin characters are very different in structure. Latin characters are between two parallel lines, and the structure of square characters is easier to deal with the problem of balance. Persian characters, on the other hand, are more fluid and have more random letter combinations. Designers can design in a more novel way, and the graphic effect is more obvious than Latin characters. His other poster, Impression of Iran, was made for the exhibition of Iranian photographers: the main graphic of the picture is the image of a traditional Iranian man with his head wrapped, showing strong local characteristics. As a designer who has studied in Britain and France, MehdiSaeedi understands that for most people, the recognition of Persian is limited, so there are always themes marked in English in his works, which are organically combined with the original Persian characters. In his own words, it is "trying to combine the characteristics of these two languages." MehdiSaeedi tells us through his successful poster design that the collision between different cultures can often spark unexpected sparks.
(C) the "chemical effect" caused by the collision between Chinese and Western cultures
Many poster designs designed by Chen Youjian, a famous Hong Kong designer, are full of China cultural elements, and this Chinese flavor is expressed by simple and easy-to-understand modern design techniques. He himself responded modestly: "Basically all my things are superficial. But why am I doing so well? Because I know how to express my culture, which makes people in China and foreigners feel interesting. But it doesn't mean that I know much about China culture. Ask me another question, I may not be able to give you a deeper answer. " Using this design concept of different cultures to complete the works is to "express China's culture and taste through international activities, and regain the dignity of China people on the international stage through this exhibition". Look at the poster design of his solo exhibition "(East meets West)" held in Tokyo in 1990/KLOC-0. The main body of the picture is a seal character "East" written in sand. After careful observation, we can find that this traditional stroke structure of oriental characters is divided into four English letters "East", which means "East" in English. If the poster is turned upside down from another angle, the words and strokes will form "West" and become the meaning of "West". He skillfully combined the English words "East" and "West" in the same ancient China script, which not only covered the theme of this solo exhibition "East meets West", but also reflected the blending and intersection of East and West. The overall picture is warm yellow, and the font depiction in the gravel reflects the mystery and vicissitudes of ancient oriental culture and history.
The poster designed by Chen Youjian for the exhibition of seven Hong Kong designers' works in "Hong Kong East and West" is also full of inspiration sparks generated by the collision of different cultures. There is a cup of hot tea in the center of the light-colored picture, which is a typical China porcelain teacup, outlined with a few strokes, but the cup is filled with black tea. The label composed of red and yellow is reminiscent of Lipton, a British classic brand with the reputation of "the king of black tea in the world", but the text on the label has been changed to the theme of this exhibition. The tea in the cup is steaming, and the rising gas is composed of colored lines, which seems to mean that the design works of Hong Kong designers who have grown up under the influence of eastern and western cultures will surely shine in the design world through the presentation of this exhibition. The poster is plain in color, prominent in the main body of the picture, concise but not simple, and contains rich and meaningful content. It is not only the "patent" of Hong Kong designers to integrate the oriental cultural tradition with the western design aesthetics. Mainland designers have also felt the unique design charm of the combination of East and West, and created many excellent poster design works. In a set of poster designs named "A Hundred Flowers Let a Hundred Schools of Thought contend" designed by Shenzhen graphic designer Liu Yongqing, he skillfully combined Chinese and Western characters. In the picture, "a hundred flowers blossom" is combined with traditional flower graphics, and the word "a hundred schools of thought contend" is combined with the statue of Confucius, which embodies the literal meaning of these eight words. At first glance, the two posters are unremarkable, but after careful reflection, we find that the theme words are different-the strokes of Chinese characters are composed of English letters, and different English fonts also give Chinese fonts different font effects, Song Like style and bold style. Through the designer's treatment, the eastern and western characters are skillfully combined to present an unexpected harmonious visual effect in the picture.
Third, the conclusion
Culture is a broad and abstract concept, which exists in all aspects of our lives, but it is difficult to define it accurately. In the field of poster design, designers condense it into visual elements, which are reflected in the picture. When designing creativity and performance, we should not only consider the acceptance of the widest audience, but also ensure the unique cultural connotation and personality characteristics of the work, so it is particularly important to properly grasp the relationship between cultural differences and identity. This is also one of the long-term research topics that our country's design works need to be internationalized while maintaining the characteristics of China.
Problems in the design of traditional festival illustrations The problems in the design of traditional festival illustrations may include the following aspects:
Lack of innovation: The illustration design of some traditional festivals often adopts traditional patterns and elements, lacking novelty and innovation. This will easily lead to the visual fatigue of the audience, thus affecting the attraction and promotion effect of the design works.
Cultural misunderstanding: In some cases, designers may lack a deep understanding of traditional festival culture, resulting in inappropriate or inaccurate cultural symbols and elements in design works, leaving a bad impression on people.
Inappropriate: The illustration design of some traditional festivals may be too old-fashioned and out of touch with the trend of the times, making it difficult to attract the attention of young people. In addition, some illustrations may lag behind the times in expression and color application, and lose the pursuit of contemporary aesthetic standards.
Commercialization tendency: In the social background with strong commercial atmosphere, some illustrators may overemphasize commercial elements in pursuit of commercial interests, which makes illustration design far away from traditional cultural connotation and become monotonous and soulless.
Therefore, designers should pay attention to the balance between cultural inheritance, innovative development and aesthetic pursuit when designing traditional festival illustrations, so as to avoid the above problems and make the works more valuable and meaningful.