When the intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts frequently becomes the fashion inspiration of domestic brands and time-honored packaging designs.
It is necessary to match the beads, not to "buy and return the pearls".
Chinese traditional arts and crafts can be described as a splendid flower in the garden of Chinese excellent traditional culture. Among them, traditional handicrafts are the most intuitive memory symbols for the inheritance of human civilization, which on the one hand provides a material basis for human life and continuity, and on the other hand, it is regarded as the link and presentation of human spiritual connection and emotional communication. "Applying art according to aptitude, making tools are still used, endowing things with affection, and maintaining etiquette" has become the core connotation of traditional handicraft skills.
When the world enters the post-industrial era, the practical functions of the means of production and living and tools of traditional handicrafts are gradually stripped away, replaced by their aesthetic value, cultural value, emotional value and social value, and there is a shift from the technical field represented by material to romanticism and naturalism represented by spirit, and "handmade" is being reshaped into a cultural picture of "returning to the world of daily life". However, in this idealized process of "reshaping" and "reinvention", we should also be vigilant about how traditional handicraft skills can not be wrongly appropriated or abused in the market-oriented commercialization trend, so as to avoid the resistance of consumers due to the nihilistic premium of commodity culture.
The pursuit of personalized consumption has turned to rejuvenate the intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts.
In the 21 years since the promulgation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, traditional crafts are one of the five important components of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. In China, there are a total of 629 national intangible cultural heritage projects in the category of traditional skills, covering many aspects such as carving and shaping, textile dyeing and embroidery, clothing production, catering and food, architectural construction, furniture and study, plant cultivation, and restoration skills.
Machinery production in the industrial age has increasingly presented a variety of negative directions, such as the poor quality due to mass production for profit, the super-assimilation of world products to dissolve regional characteristics, the domination of machinery, the lack of creativity, the loss of craftsmen and traditional skills, and so on. In the social context of social transformation and consumption upgrading, the market is flooded with the same industrial quick throwing product packaging. At the same time, under the tension of machine aesthetics and handicraft aesthetics, Chinese's aesthetic consumption is also at the node of rapid transformation.
As the Japanese folk artist Soyue Yanagi said, "The difference between the hand and the machine is that the hand is connected to the heart, while the machine is unintentional." Handicraft induces miracles because it is not just a simple manual labor, but a creation of the mind and gives joy to labor, and the reason why handicrafts induce miracles is because there is a control of the mind behind it, which gives the object a beautiful quality through the hands. In "Separation: A Social Critique of Taste Judgment", the French sociologist Bourdieu conducted a sociological investigation and analysis of the cultural consumption of social classes in the fields of "taste", "habits", "cultural capital" and "life style", and believed that through a certain cultural symbol, consumers can establish their unique status and identity.
Today, personalized and customized consumption has become an emerging trend of consumption, and traditional handicrafts that are not well known to the public naturally have the consumption symbol of "cultural scarcity", which has become the first choice for consumers to "personalize" in their self-concept, in order to strengthen the construction of their own cultural identity. When this kind of "blatant claim of individuality" resonates with the consumer's self-concept, it becomes the best way to express aesthetics, tastes, hobbies, etc., and produces the charm of labeling and enables the realization of individual differences.
The productive protection of intangible cultural heritage is an effective way to return intangible cultural heritage to the daily life of contemporary people on the basis of satisfying the needs of the people in terms of practicality, aesthetics and standardism. Attaching importance to the close combination of traditional crafts and contemporary life, enriching the themes and product varieties of traditional crafts, improving the level of process design and production, improving the quality of craft products, cultivating Chinese craftsmen and well-known brands, and promoting the new and wide application of traditional crafts in contemporary life are all regarded as an important embodiment of the in-depth implementation of the revitalization plan of Chinese traditional crafts.
In recent years, in the continuous update and iteration of domestic brands and time-honored brands, traditional craftsmanship has become the main fashion trend of its packaging design, and the high-frequency appearance of this cross-border cooperation has become a new position for brands and intangible cultural heritage to join forces.
There is no shortage of time-honored brands of various brands with traditional handicrafts such as luodian, lacquerware, silk, Song brocade, bamboo weaving, ceramics, gold and silver joinery, etc. For example, the luodian lacquer box selected by Xie Fuchun's duck egg powder adopts the Yangzhou lacquerware flat grinding luodian process, and the fancy pattern on the lacquer box lid is spliced with natural shells; Shanghai Jahwa's Herborist's skin-rejuvenating series products use traditional filigree inlay techniques to reproduce the pattern of herbs and traditional ruyi moire; For example, the packaging of Biluochun tea and Guojiao series of wines adopts the traditional silk skills that enjoy the reputation of "one inch of silk and one inch of gold". In addition to the high-end and complicated skills, the extensive use of natural materials such as bamboo, wood, grass, cotton, lacquer, metal, ceramics, etc., coupled with the new interpretation of the cultural meaning of traditional ornamentation in the context of the times, has added profound cultural added value to the brand image of domestic products in the new era.
After hundreds of years of inheritance, the time-honored domestic brand itself is a representative of "Seiko", coupled with the unique scarcity characteristics of traditional handicraft, natural materials and the memory of the times, it has formed a specific style of cultural consumer goods, providing a consumption experience that is very different from the disposable quick-throwing materials of industrial packaging. The cross-border design cooperation between domestic brands and handicraft intangible cultural heritage, both of which draw cultural essence from history, will lead the public consumption of products that have lasted for a hundred years with a new attitude, highlighting the unique aesthetic taste and wisdom, and at the same time embodying the soul of intangible cultural heritage element design, realizing a high degree of unity of form and connotation, which is an effective way to achieve a win-win situation.
From these cases, it is not difficult to get a glimpse of the intellectualization, personalization and cultural diversification of consumers' product choices in the context of the simultaneous development of material culture and spiritual culture. Compared with the monopoly trend of Western modern design in the past, handicraft intangible cultural heritage is more widely used in the packaging design of modern products, which is precisely due to the continuous examination and reflection of "the use of instruments" and "the way of instruments", as well as the expression and highlighting of national cultural self-confidence, and the affirmation and forward-looking recognition of the survival value and development ability of the excellent traditional culture of the nation.
Don't let commercial value steal the limelight from social utility and cultural value.
Old brands carry out younger innovation, use the "fan economy" of young brands to carry out creative cross-border marketing, and customize cross-border products with the attraction of young groups, which can establish emotional connection with young audiences, form a more holistic and comprehensive brand impression, and promote a win-win situation. However, at the same time, we should also be wary of some new brands eager to establish market influence, utilitarianly using the current hot spots of intangible cultural heritage to create gimmicks, instead of really paying attention to the values and craftsmanship behind the intangible cultural heritage skills, as well as the social utility and cultural functions of traditional skills and intangible cultural heritage, which will inevitably put the cart before the horse and cause emotional resistance from consumers, resulting in negative communication and public misunderstanding of this intangible cultural heritage. For example, recently, a variety of cross-border cooperation on intangible cultural heritage has emerged on e-commerce platforms and live streaming, involving beauty, clothing, food, daily necessities, agricultural and sideline products, and even tourism products.
From industrial packaging to the handmade high-end customization of traditional crafts, the transformation of consumption concepts requires a certain amount of knowledge guidance and cultivation, and more traditional crafts intangible cultural heritage are applied to product packaging design, which can give us an in-depth understanding of the time spent on each process of traditional crafts, and the history of several generations of craftsmen, and understand what is the philosophy of "the beauty of oriental hand-made". Traditional crafts empowering the "national tide" design on the basis of the development of life aesthetic education is not only a strategy for resource transformation or a path for market expansion, but also a response to the deep-seated needs of social development.
Intangible cultural heritage belongs to the collective creation of the people, and it is passed on from generation to generation among the people, and the intangible cultural heritage itself originates from life, and at the same time serves life, and can be effectively used in the living world, so as to fully activate the vitality and living inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. However, we should also reflect on and pay attention to the following three points in the protection of intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts: first, the communication between intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts and the daily life of the public; the second is the relationship between the innovation of intangible cultural heritage of traditional crafts and the protection of their authenticity; The third is the relationship between the protection of the production practice of traditional handicraft intangible cultural heritage and the social, national cultural and ecological environment. For example, the cross-border cooperation between the national intangible cultural heritage Sichuan Qingshen bamboo weaving skills and many well-known brands at home and abroad has been used as food packaging, ceramic accessories, art installations and even emerging scientific and technological means, not only highlighting the surface of the concept of organic and environmentally friendly life under the plastic ban, but also arousing the public's continuous attention to the natural ecology and cultural ecology of this intangible cultural heritage skill, and its contribution to creating jobs, tourism opportunities, improving education, and even rural revitalization and artistic rural construction.
China's traditional crafts have a historical foundation and traditional connotation, is the continuous evolution of production, life of the living context, and its fit with the "national tide" design, not only reflects the meaning of traditional crafts in contemporary China new generation and practice, but also reflects the contemporary Chinese economy, culture of the new transformation and promotion. We encourage the application of traditional craft intangible cultural heritage to the creative design of packaging, and through the redesign of traditional cultural cultural elements, cultural connotations and symbol systems, we will make them more suitable for the consumption psychology and emotional needs of the current young people, stimulate new social service effects, more effectively construct the identity of intangible cultural heritage, and realize the sustainable development of intangible cultural heritage.
The author, Fang Yun, is a researcher at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Theory and Application Innovation Base of Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts, and a distinguished researcher at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritance and Application Center of East China Normal University
*: Wen Wei Po.