In the vast Chinese land, the complex and diverse topography has created a rich variety of products. However, by the mountains and rivers, many flavors of origin need to be discovered. Especially, in today's "wine is afraid of the alley deep" era, how to make these products stand out, out of the countryside, into the city? Design, is becoming an important bridge between the connection. A good design is comparable to an excellent salesman, and through the value enhancement of diversified integration such as material selection, visual construction, artistic presentation and brand reengineering, it can greatly enhance the consumer attraction of agricultural products and provide strong momentum for rural economic development. This feature article will focus on the countryside and explore the power of packaging design in rural revitalization through the brushstrokes of Shenzhen designers.
#1
Generation of Creative Interest
For the rich rural products, how to make them more suitable for the current consumption trend through effective packaging design? Creativity and fun generation become an important way to give them a new vitality. In the opinion of Liao Bofeng, the founder of Material Design, "effective, interesting and material" is the best way to present a work. In the packaging design of "Tenfold Fruit" apples for Yichuan County, Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, he drew inspiration from the "bun doll" shape of paper-cutting in northern Shaanxi Province and created a male and a female "Jiwa "as the main image. In the image, the "Jiwa" are wearing green tops and purple pants, carrying a red and large apple together, as if they are sending the fruits of the old farmers' hard work in northern Shaanxi to everyone to taste and send a peaceful (apple) good luck to everyone.
>Packaging design of "Tenfold Fruit" by Liao Bofeng
Yichuan County is located in the southeast of Yan'an City, known as the "Northern Fruit Tree Natural Museum", is one of the world's best apple eugenics, its natural conditions meet all the elements of apple growth: sufficient light, large temperature difference between day and night, high altitude, deep soil, strong ultraviolet rays, the apples produced are large and uniform, colorful, crisp, flavorful and pollution-free, resistant to storage. The annual output is up to 450,000 tons. "To grow a crisp, sweet and delicious apple, farmers usually have to work very hard to take care of it like their own children, weeding, fertilizing, cutting, bagging, bagging, picking and storing, each step must be meticulous to ensure the superior quality and taste of each apple." Liao Bofeng said. To reflect the painstaking process from planting to harvesting, Liao also used paper cutouts to depict four scenes of "Jiwa" working in the orchard: irrigation, pest control, picking and harvest celebration, hoping to show the difficulties of planting. This series of images can also be used in packaging, posters and other materials.
>Packaging design of "Tenfold Fruit", by Liao Bofeng
The brand name of "Tenfold Fruit" is also very interesting. "We refer to the common alliteration in Shaanxi language, such as 'shandandan blossom,' 'yam fork,' 'yellow rice bun,' and 'orchid flower. ' and other common superlatives in the language of northern Shaanxi, combined with the characteristics of the fruit industry to form the brand name, which is friendly and easy to remember and catchy." Liao Bofeng said, "The new design has achieved a good market response and helped local fruit farmers create their own apple brand and increase their economic income. After seeing it, many fruit farmers even want to buy the packaging cartons we designed directly."
"The blue clouds lead the wind to blow constantly, and the white flowers float light to condense the bowl surface." As the only diversified product in the tea industry that combines the efficacy of drinking, eating and makeup, matcha is highly sought after for its unique taste and healthy properties, which can be widely used in food, medical and cosmetic industries. In Tongren City, Guizhou Province, the "Matcha Capital of China", how to use matcha as a medium to promote the transformation and upgrading of the tea industry and serve the revitalization of the countryside is one of the key directions for the local leading agricultural enterprise - Guizhou Gui Cha Group Co.
>Package design of "Be My Tea Instant Matcha", photo by Lingyun Creative
Based on this, Gui Cha joined hands with Lingyun Creative to create a fresh and natural creative packaging for its "Be My Tea Instant Matcha" product, hoping to enhance the development momentum of the local tea industry with the power of design. "The maturity and widespread use of cold extract freeze-drying technology has given rise to a variety of 'capsule coffee' or 'capsule tea', but these products are more homogeneous in terms of shape." Ling Yun creative founder Deng Xiongbo said, in order to make a different matcha product packaging, he will design the product into a set of "potted plants": tea powder for the soil, tea buckets transformed into pots, the bucket lid grows a fresh green plants; oval, oval, halberd-shaped and other seven different shapes of the leaves, creating seven different spring and vitality.
>Package design of "Be My Tea Instant Matcha", photo by Lingyun Creative
Interestingly, unlike the traditional product manual, Deng Xiongbo drew a comic group picture of "ASTORY ABOUT BE MY TEA" for this matcha, linking the steps of use in the creative story of "restoring a cup of online tea in seconds". The simple lines of the manga and the fresh white and green color scheme bring a sense of calm and healing to consumers. After the product is used, the packaging can also be used as decorations: after the consumer has finished enjoying it, the tea bucket is washed, covered and positioned, and the potted decorations are interesting and creative, which not only beautify the space, but also enhance the additional functions of the product and achieve the purpose of sustainable recycling.
Also for tea packaging, designer Zeng Lingbo led the Slow Matter team has a different choice. 2016 Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching, they created a seemingly minimalist but not simple "moonlight" gift box for "Moonlight White Tea". "Moonlight White Tea" originates from the old cottage of Half Slope on Nannuo Mountain, Granghe Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province. It has more than 5,000 acres of well-protected primitive forest and 800 years of continuous cultivated ancient tea plantations, and is known as "the first village of ancient tea". The ancient white tea picked from here, because the whole production process to avoid sunlight, relying only on room temperature so that the water slowly evaporates and dries, the tea surface is black, the back of the leaves are black and white, the buds are bright and white, like a crescent moon, so it is called "moonlight white tea", tea taste natural and pure, rich in floral and honey fragrance.
>Packaging design of the "Moonlight" box, photo by Slow Matter
In the design, the "Moonlight" gift box is pure "white" from the outside to the inside. The main body of the gift box is a pure white tea box without ink printing, and the overall material is hot stamping paper, which is thick and fluffy. In the outer envelope, Zeng Lingbo used printmaking to create a lunar figure, which was heat-pressed to create a sculptural pattern on the paper, with large and small "craters" and a deep and shallow "moon sea". At the same time, the heat-pressed lunar pattern becomes thin in some areas, forming a good local translucency, just like a real and touchable model of the moon.
>Moonlight" gift box design, photo by Slow Matter
"Mid-Autumn Festival is an important traditional festival for Chinese people, and it has been the custom to give gifts to each other. However, some of the disposable Mid-Autumn Festival gift packaging, regardless of the cost, extravagant and pompous, has led to a serious waste of resources." Zeng Lingbo said. Based on this, the "moonlight white tea" packaging is designed with reusable functions: the bottom of the tea box is pre-installed with LED lights, set the gravity-sensing function in the controller part, just change the vertical / flat state of the tea box, you can conveniently control the light on and off effect. When the tea inside the box is finished, the box can be reused and transformed into a white "moonlight" night light.
#2
A quaint and natural expression
>Packaging design for "Shanshui Recommendation: Black Mountain Rice from Liangshan, Qingyuan", photo by Yu Ziji Design Office
As a gift from nature, agricultural products not only bring people rich and diverse flavor enjoyment, but also show a powerful force of nature for people. How can this power of nature be conveyed through design? Designer Yu Ziji answered this question with his "Shanshui Recommendation: Black Mountain Rice from Lianshan, Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province" packaging for Heshan Village, Taibao Town, Lianshan Zhuang and Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province.
>Packaging design of "Shanshui Recommendation: Black Mountain Rice from Lianshan, Qingyuan", photo by Yu Ziji Design Office
"For thousands of years, people living in this small mountain village in northwest Guangdong have used their diligent hands to reclaim layers of terraced rice fields on the topography of nine mountains and half water and half fields, making it the main field for obtaining food. The higher altitude has formed a big drop of high mountains and deep valleys, making the terraced fields seem to be surrounded by high mountain clouds. Nowadays, the villagers of Heshan Village still maintain the lifestyle of working at sunrise and resting at sunset, cultivating in the terraced fields surrounded by clouds, expressing their reverence for nature in their unique way. Through this design, I hope to convey this simplicity and tranquility." Yu Ziji said.
>Packaging design of "Shanshui Recommendation: Black Mountain Rice from Lianshan, Qingyuan", photo by Yu Ziji Design Office
The phrase "a grain of rice in the mountains, a grain of rice in the mountains" inspired Yu Ziji and was translated into the external design of the packaging: by extracting the natural scenery of Hei Shan village, the texture of the terraced rice fields surrounded by clouds was expressed in the visual graphic language of dots, lines and surfaces, and was integrated into the rice grain graphic to form a The "lucky rice" graphic not only highlights the local characteristics of the product, but also shows the superiority of the production environment, evoking the intention of the landscape in people's mind.
>Packaging design of "Shanshui Recommendation: Black Mountain Rice from Liangshan, Qingyuan", photo by Yu Ziji Design Office
In the inner package design, Yu Ziji extracted the images of five auspicious animals, namely, Fuyi, White Crane, Koi, Lucky Deer and Magpie, and specially designed five auspicious totems, namely, "Fu", "Lu", "Shou" and "Cai". "happiness" and "wealth", which are printed in the center of the inner package and the red and white color scheme is used to reinforce the auspicious symbolism. "The deconstruction and redesign of the animal images is to use modern design language to regain the neglected traditional cultural values. These five images are carriers of culture and blessings, and represent the people's aspirations for happiness, promotion, longevity, joy and prosperity in five aspects with a simple and straightforward artistic language." Yu Ziji said. To achieve the extension of the packaging function, the inner packaging of the product has a scale printed on the inside, which can be used as a measuring cup for measuring rice.
"The simpler it is, the more powerful it is." Yang Zhen, design director of Firewolf Design, said so. In the packaging design of "Yuping Xiaodi - Xiandi" for Shenzhen YiYitong Trade Co., Ltd, he restores the natural truth with "simple" design, and gives a new life to Yuping Xiaodi in order to promote the development of xiaoqi culture industry.
>Packaging design of "Yuping xiaoqi - Xiandi" by Yang Zhen, Yang Jialu, Yang Xue, Su Xiyu, Zhang Kaiyao, Yang Chunwang, Photo by Firewolf Design
Yuping xiao flute, produced in Yuping County, Guizhou Province, is a famous traditional bamboo wind instrument in China, known for its beautiful and clear tone and exquisite carving. As the crystallization of the development of multi-ethnic cultures of Dong, Han, Miao and Tujia in Yuping, Yuping xiaoqi has high historical, cultural and technological values, and its production techniques were selected as the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list as early as 2006. However, under the tide of modernization, Yuping xiao flute is facing a dilemma of inheritance. How to solve the problem? In the packaging design of "Yuping Xiaodi - Immortal Flute", Yang Zhen emphasizes the product's origin and the design fits the material of the product itself. In order to echo the product's raw material from the local bamboo, the packaging design adopts the shape of bamboo knots; in the selection of packaging materials, the use of paper with similar material and texture as bamboo, and folded into the shape of bamboo knots, without attaching too many design concepts; in the brand logo design, the element of pentameter is incorporated to reflect the product's musical attributes. "Using the bamboo section as the main design element not only reflects that the Yuping Xiao Flute is a product from nature, which is ecological, environmentally friendly and recyclable, but also conveys the good symbolic meaning of rising and rising, longevity and well-being, youthfulness and exuberant vitality." Yang Zhen said. With the simple and powerful design idea, the packaging design of "Yuping Xiaodi - Xiandi" won the 2021 German Red Dot Design Award and the 2022 American Muse Design Award Silver Award.
>Packaging design of "Yuping Xiaodi - Immortal Flute" by Yang Zhen, Yang Jialu, Yang Xue, Su Xiyu, Zhang Kaiyao, Yang Chunwang, Photo by Firewolf Design
#3
Recreation of symbolic elements
Glyphs and patterns are the important elements of packaging design. How to effectively fuse local interest and contemporary aesthetics through design to make various agricultural products stand out from the consumer market? "Combining local and contemporary together can provide a new design vision for local agricultural product packaging design." So says Zhang Shuo, founder of SURE Design. With a warm, friendly and fresh style, he launched the branding and packaging design for the "Good Rice Fan" rice of Shanghai Good Rice Fan E-commerce Co.
>Packaging design of "Good Rice Fan", photo by SURE Design
This combination is firstly reflected in the design of the brand name. The three characters of "Good Rice Fan" are written in a heavy and robust script, and the English word "Hope Rise" is interspersed between the Chinese characters at an oblique angle, surrounded by bundles of rice ears, birds and sunrise graphics, showing the scene of a bountiful rice field. "The simple handwriting as the base language of the design provides a sense of local context for the product. During the creation process, we tried our best to use handwriting that looks like a child's spontaneous handwriting, giving it an awkward quality; at the same time, we standardized it from a design perspective, making the font both beautiful and modern. In order to strengthen the rustic feeling of the agricultural products, we also chose the packaging material based on kraft paper and paper rope, which also provides further interest to the product procurement scene." Zhang Shuo said.
>Packaging design of "Good Rice Fan", SURE Design
Illustrating the characters and core scenes of the product is another way to combine local and contemporary. In the internal packaging, Zhang Shuo used the growers' personalities, families and villages as the creative units to weave a small, direct and localized story, which is presented in the center of the product packaging, greatly narrowing the psychological distance between the agricultural products and consumers in a light-hearted and interesting way. For example, the scene behind the production of "Rice in Chongming New Village" is depicted with colorful pencil drawings, which vividly shows the rice field scenery in front of consumers: three rice farmers stand side by side in the center of the picture, holding scythes and rice, with sun hats on their heads and smiling faces, while cute fonts and sincere, simple words at the bottom of the design promote the high quality and deliciousness of rice.
>Packaging design of "Cloud Used" by Yang Zhen, Yang Jialu, Li Liangying, Zhang Kaiyao, Yang Chunwang, Su Xiyu, Photo by Firewolf Design
Various traditional folk arts also provide designers with rich nourishment for inspiration. Through their innovative transformation, the traditional folk art symbols and modern humanistic life have formed a connotative integration and unification. "Half a raw image of a big New Year painting, a new line of poetry of less travel." With a history of more than 300 years, Tantou New Year paintings are one of the Han folk crafts of Tantou Town, Longhui, Baoqing (now Shaoyang City), Hunan Province. The simplicity of Tantou town, the abundance of minerals, the dense supply of nan bamboo, and the purity and clarity of the cave streams laid the foundation for the development of the local paper industry, and created a good geographical and human environment for the creation and development of woodblock prints. "The traditional handmade Tantou New Year paintings have been affected by modern printing technology, and the market has shrunk and the production volume has decreased sharply. At present, there are only 40 types of Tantu New Year paintings left, and many techniques have been lost. If the charm of Tantou New Year paintings can be brought into play through creative design, it can well help revitalize the local countryside." Yang Zhen said. Based on this, he used the elements of Tantou New Year paintings to create the "Cloud Used" pastry packaging, which opened up a new path for the inheritance of Tantou New Year paintings.
>Packaging design of "Cloud Used" by Yang Zhen, Yang Jialu, Li Liangying, Zhang Kaiyao, Yang Chunwang, Su Xiyu, Photo by Firewolf Design
"'Yun Used Ji' pastries, including lantern core cake, osmanthus candy, bean felt candy and mahjong pastry, are all traditional Hunan pastries, which are well-loved by people." In Yang Zhen's view, combining the elements of Hunan Tantu New Year paintings with traditional Hunan food can not only inherit the excellent culture and traditional food of Hunan together, but also use it to create a unique local characteristic pastry brand and slowly form a pastry brand symbol belonging to Hunan. In the packaging design, he hand-drew the traditional Chinese zodiac in the style of Tantu New Year paintings, with red, yellow and blue as the main colors, in which monkeys, pigs and tigers are showing people the pastries in their hands. The text is handwritten in traditional Song font. The retro text with the color of the New Year painting shows strong oriental customs and also fits the attributes of the ancient oriental food.
"Good logo, no inflection." In designer Pan Hu's opinion, "The brand jungle has always been cruel, consumers do not have much time left for each brand, if they do not remember it at the first glance, it is difficult to have a second chance." In his branding and packaging upgrade program for the Inner Mongolia Bayannur melon seed brand "three fat eggs", how to combine the brand name and its brand image into one, directly to the consumer's mind, is a major focus of the packaging upgrade. To this end, he took the name of "Three Fat Eggs" as the starting point for association, fused the paper-cutting and shadow elements of traditional Chinese culture, and used a simplified and childish expression to design a character image of three fat boys embracing each other, which visually conveyed the warm, sunny and genuine brand characteristics of "Three Fat Eggs", The brand identity of "Three Fat Eggs" is warm, sunny and genuine.
>Packaging design for "Three Fatty Eggs" by Pan Hu
"The difficulty in updating the packaging image of the whole series of Three Fatty Eggs lies in how to form a clear image array based on the existing products, while leaving room for the future development of more non-melon seed products." Pan Hu said. In the color selection, he presented a large area of the brand's main color red on the front of each product while using red, yellow and blue to distinguish between different material bodies and sizes of original melon seeds, and a more intuitive orange color for pumpkin seeds. In the graphic design, he recreated the traditional Chinese graphics in the form of letter combination patterns. The original flavor melon seed packaging is interspersed with large geometric lines, while the different flavors of melon seeds such as five spice and pumpkin seeds are extended with finer and more taste-appropriate graphics based on red, yellow and blue, thus charting out the visual direction for the future diversified product line. In the gift boxes of the different series, colors and graphics are perfectly integrated: the full sunflower is placed in the yellow leather box to enhance the brand texture; the white-drawn nature landscape with the golden paper box presents the difference between the taste and production process of Qingxiang melon seeds and the original melon seeds.
#4
Translation of cultural context
The excavation of agricultural products is closely related to the local terroir. The packaging design of the product is even more inseparable from the cultural support behind it. In the mind of Liu Yongqing, founder of Huashi Design, good packaging is good selling power, and packaging with cultural connotation is more likely to trigger people's attention.
>Packaging design of "Heng You Feng Taste", photo by Huashi Design
In order to implement the strategy of rural revitalization, promote the deep excavation of agricultural products in Hengfeng County, Jiangxi Province, and promote the sales of agricultural products in Hengfeng County, Hengfeng County worked with Liu Yongqing to design a series of branding and packaging for its public brand of agricultural products "Heng You Feng Taste" in 2021. As one of the six revolutionary bases in China during the Agrarian Revolution, Hengfeng County has a rich history and culture. At the same time, Hengfeng County has rich resources and excellent varieties of kudzu, and is the "hometown of Chinese kudzu". In recent years, Hengfeng County has vigorously implemented the "beautiful countryside and happy home" creation activities, and the "beautiful countryside" has become the latest and most beautiful business card here. "Natural resources, red cradle, beautiful countryside model for the brand design has laid a solid cultural foundation."
>Packaging design of "Heng You Feng Taste", photo by Huashi Design
In the brand naming, "'Heng' represents the name of the county; 'Feng' is the name of the county and also has the symbolic meaning of Hengfeng's agricultural products harvest; 'Taste ' can lead consumers to associate Hengfeng agricultural products with full flavor. The harmonics of 'Heng You Feng Taste' are catchy, simple and easy to spread, and can also accurately convey the product concept of 'natural goodness out of Heng Feng'." Liu Yongqing said, "The packaging should have a sense of design and visual impact on the basis of reflecting the value of raw materials." For this reason, he chose illustration as the way to reflect the design sense, and divided the packaging style into beautiful village illustration style, farming culture illustration style and simple atmosphere illustration style.
In the beautiful village illustration style design, Liu Yongqing restored many well-known natural landscapes in Hengfeng County, including Ochre Pavilion Mountain and Ochre Pavilion Mountain Reservoir, using brown and green colors to represent the natural colors, and highly restored the real scenes to show the beautiful rural scenery; in the farming culture illustration style design, he artistically processed the oil tea flowers, kudzu leaves and kudzu flowers to reflect the natural health of the product materials; in the simple atmosphere illustration style design, he chose the illustration to reflect the natural health of the product materials. In the design of simple and atmospheric illustration style, he illustrated the working scenes of villagers picking sticks, digging kudzu and plowing by oxen, aiming to convey the farming culture of Hengfeng.
>The packaging design of "Hand Twisted Spring - Yiwu Spring", Banana Design's photo
In the "Hand Twisted Spring - Yiwu Spring" gift box packaging created by Banana Design for Yiwu Mountain Tuocha, "spring" becomes the core key to enhance the value of the product. Yiwu Mountain, located in the northern part of Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan Province, is known as "the top six tea mountains in Yunnan" and is also the source of the ancient tea horse road between Yunnan and Tibet. Thanks to the unique climatic environment of Yiwu Mountain with dense clouds, the tea trees growing here contain more alpine amino acids, chlorophyll and nitrogenous aromatic substances, and the tea leaves are characterized by dark, long and bubbly ropes. In 2022, Banana Design founder Lin Xu-Pan led his team to understand the background and decided to incorporate the "spring" element into the packaging. The meaning of "spring" is particularly prominent on the front of the gift box, where a cloudy, cascading mountain comes into view and the design team arranged it into a "spring" character, which intuitively expresses the design of "spring". The design team arranged them to form a "spring" character, which visually expresses the "spring" atmosphere in the design. "We chose the color scheme of ink and wash commonly used in ancient Chinese paintings to draw the mountains, and the gradual color change of the tea hills is like the new leaves growing in spring, full of dynamics and freshness, conveying the budding of spring life. The color tone is the green of spring, which can make people feel the 'tender' of the first spring at a glance." This is what Lin Xu-Pan said.
>Packaging design of "Hand-twisted Spring - Yiwu Spring", photo by Banana Design
The expression of "spring" does not stop here. Looking at the details of the tea mountain painting, we can see that a tea picking girl wearing a bamboo hat passes by the Yiwu pagoda, crosses the ancient town, steps through the tea lane, holds a bamboo basket and walks around the mountain, picking the full and tender tea cores and putting the new leaves into the basket. In Lin Xu Pan's view, the spring tea picking scene is presented through the form of landscape painting, which can strengthen the symbol of "spring" and show people the cultural heritage behind the production of Yiwu Mountain Tuocha. In order to further strengthen the perception of the long history of Yiwu Mountain Tuocha, Lin Xu-Pan also chose the long rhyming official script to design the brand logo, the gilt color of the four words "Yiwu Zhengshan" two by two in a row, was printed on the left side of the tea mountain.
Article Source:艺术与设计
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