The Holism and Its Application in Postmodern Packaging Design

Modern packaging design is an important part of modern design. Its development process is closely related to the evolution of modern design. Whether it is theoretical or specific design practice, packaging design is always at the forefront of the times and expresses a new wave of design. Design mainstream. Influenced by the post-modernist design trend, the principle of anti-modernism design in packaging design is concise, emphasizing the decorative design, boldly adopting vivid colors and striking texts, and advocating the use of materials from traditional culture to create and pursue Kind of funny, humorous feeling. Therefore, the postmodern style packaging design has no uniform appearance, but incorporates the tendencies of historicism, decorativeism, eclecticism and metaphor design. The post-modern packaging design has various forms and a wide range of contents. It enriches the design level and promotes the development of the design. However, at the same time, it makes the package appear to be messy and ambiguous. It does not pay attention to the characteristics of unity and harmony. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on how Gestalt psychology holistic theory is applied to post-modern packaging design, trying to analyze and demonstrate how to maintain an overall order in diversification.

Gestalt Psychology is a German Psychology faction. The "Gestalt" is the transliteration of the German word "Gestalt", meaning the organizational structure or the whole. The Gestalt Psychology is the whole of experience organized through perceptual activities.

Gestalt psychology has the following basic perspectives:

First of all, the starting point of the Gestalt study is "conformity." Gestalt has three characteristics: First, integrity. It opposes elemental analysis and emphasizes overall organization. It is not considered that the whole is equal to the synthesis of parts, and it is not a combination of several elements. On the contrary, the whole is the existence and restriction of the nature and meaning of the part before the part. Second, Gestalt, when it changes in its position, still maintains its integrity and function, and has tone. Third, gestalt is the whole of the organization of the object through perceptual activities, which is the pattern of the objective stimuli presented in the subject's perceptive activity. In short, when people are watching, the internal physical structure of the object makes people form a harmonious psychological structure through vision. That is, "heterogeneous isomorphism."

Second, the Gestalt is a force structure. There are centers, there are edges, there is a center of gravity, there are tendencies, there is a primary and secondary, there is actuality, there are contrasts, gestalt spontaneously pursue a balance in the organization, the power of the implication, movement are carried out around the balance. This balance is a balanced and dynamic balance of forces.

Again, Gestalt is a structure in terms of the object; in terms of the subject, it is an organization. There are two principles of the Gestalt activity: simplification and tension. Simplification is to organize complex materials into a framework of orderly forces with as few features and patterns as possible. Simplify the dynamic balance in perception by layering, classifying, and ignoring. The foundation of dynamic equilibrium lies in tension. The combination of dots, lines, and faces, the contrast and transition of colors contain the inherent “tension of tendencies”. Gestalt psychology theory not only provides new methodological significance for the development of modern psychology, but also has special significance for the entire art field, especially for the development of design art.

Postmodernity marks a multifaceted process of change. It has undergone a series of fundamental changes in science, education, and culture. These changes show that it is a new stage of human history.

Let us look at the characteristics of postmodernism:

First, its social characteristics are that modern society is a new era of expansion and proliferation of information and science and technology. Science and technology have gained more and more important status. The artificial cultural factors that symbolize, informatize, and reproduce through high-tech forces are increasingly overwhelming the natural factors.

Second, its knowledge is characterized by the fact that all knowledge is digitized, symbolized, and commercialized, and that it cannot be digitized or computerized. It is hardly seen as knowledge.

Third, its cultural characteristics are: reverse the original definition of culture, oppose the various creative principles of traditional standard culture, and abandon the traditional generalization, totalization, and identity. Definite fragmentation, marginalization, planarization, and no depth, through the combination of various dazzling symbols, colors, and light, to construct illusions and images that can't afford the original, satisfying the immediate needs of senses.

Fourth, the state of mind and mode of thinking is that it is an uncertain, vague, accidental, and elusive mental state and thought quality.

Fifth, its lifestyle is characterized by a game-style life. No longer obeying the harmonious and detailed life of traditional morality and regulations, they would rather try various new ways of life in a rebellious lifestyle that constantly breaks through traditional rules.

Entering the period of prosperity of the social economy, influenced by the multi-coexistence aesthetics of post-modernism, post-modernism put forward the ideology of “less is more” in modernism. Packaging design also shows changes from order to disorder, from the whole to multiple, from certainty to indefinite, from clear to vague, to more human-oriented, personalized, traditional, decorative, and diverse. The direction of development. In the field of packaging art in recent years, there have been a lot of strange and bizarre packaging styles and over-packaging trends. Although their shapes are uncertain and ambiguous, the structures are contradictory, and materials and attributes also show irrelevant blends. Color texts are also surprisingly uncoordinated, but this coincides with the post-modern period's unconventional and pursuing advertising effects. It echoes with the modern people's tendency to become old and new and change, which has been favored and welcomed by many people. . From this, we also realized the idea of ​​packaging design in the post-modern period, that is, we should pay attention to popular, regional, multi-level emotions, spiritual needs and aspirations, and highlight the humanistic and aesthetic values ​​of packaging.

Postmodern packaging has a variety of design methods. It often uses deformation, extrusion, superposition, reorganization, attachment, and decoration as its specific cultural tactics to reflect its cultural connotations. Its specific image characteristics are in the packaging style, style, graphics, and colors. , text, material and other aspects can be reflected.

Post-modern packaging designs vary in style from a simple and primitive national folk packaging to a vanguard avant-garde modern creative packaging, from the simple style of traditional packaging to gorgeous style, and even luxury over-packaging and so on. Even the same liquor and wine packaging style can be designed to be bold, strong or delicate and soft. All kinds of packaging can have different designs of length, width, width and width, so that people can freely choose from them, resulting in uncertainty and uncertainty in the prevalence of packaging.

In the form of packaging, traditional packaging methods and concepts have also been challenged and impacted, and only look at the packaging of liquor. From the perspective of appearance, there are either all-inclusive, or transparent, or half-closed, or complicated or simple. , Or extensive, or narrow, or layered, or disorderly ... full of strong personalization and diversity.

On the packaging structure, it is from comprehensive and clear to decomposed and fuzzy. Deconstructing the distinctive structure designed by the traditional three-dimensional construction method and combining the plane modeling with the three-dimensional modeling to reconstruct the structure of each part of the package to make it have the characteristics of free, loose, fuzzy, abrupt, motion and other anti-conventional structural design features. , resulting in a new visual effect.

The overlapping of the natural color with low purity and the bright stimulating color with high purity exists in the packaging color (including the combination and change of graphics and fonts). Some show vivid and lively interest and drama through whimsical muted colors. In addition, the use of layering, combination, transparency, texture and other design processes on the material, so that the color produces a dark and orderly gradient and disorderly change, add an infinite interest in packaging.

In the packaging materials, there are also obvious diversity, richness characteristics, which are concentrated in the materials of raw materials, morphological structure, texture texture and the combination of the mutual comparison. Some designers also creatively often use deformation, hollowing, combination and other processing techniques to enrich the appearance of materials, give the material a new image, and emphasize the aesthetic value of material design.

The application of the gestalt holism in the postmodern era packaging design:

1. Diversified understanding

Despite the diversity of packaging, our lives have become gorgeous and full of personality. However, packaging design is not simply a multi-element stacking, with the aim of being confusing and ambiguous. Because it is not a post-modernity, it is a postmodern state of chaos. Postmodern packaging is not design anarchy, or arbitrary design method, postmodern packaging design has seemingly messy, in essence there are intrinsic structural factors and overall considerations of rationalization. Postmodernity is the inheritance and development of modernity. It does not like the fragmentation of modernity, but aspires to a new holistic modernity that transcends diversity.

2. Specific ideas for achieving the principle of integrity

The packaging design uses Gestalt Psychology's integrity as a methodology, but compared with the modernist period's pursuit of functionality and simplicity, it gives packaging design new organizational principles. That is, under the premise of maintaining the first packaging function, fully develop the decorativeness and internal connection of multiple “parts”. Designers realize that it is important to express the overall sense of packaging and harmony. Based on intuitive observations and self-assessment of their visual performance, as well as the audience's reactions, they concluded that both the designer himself and the viewer do not appreciate the chaotic and disorderly image. A poorly formatted galaxy image lacks visual integrity and a sense of harmony. The resulting visual effects are lack of contact, scattered details and lack of integrity, which undermine people's visual stability and give people the overall impression that they are problem". Such a visual image is bound to be ignored by people and even rejected. As a visual art, packaging must be conveyed through the unique and complete "image" language. In other words, it combines a variety of elements (styling, color, graphics, text, materials, decoration, etc.) into a whole, affecting each other, being unified with each other, and harmonizing with the environment and synchronizing with society. The consumer's goodwill generally comes directly from the packaging's sense of shape, color, pattern, and texture. This is a comprehensive psychological effect. In terms of color, everyone has their own favorite and annoying colors, which of course cannot be forced, but they also have in common. For example, most women like white and red and pink. They are called women's colors. The use of white and red in the packaging of women's products can cause women's love. Men like to be solemn and solemn black, black is also called men's color, men's special packaging and black can get men's favor.

3. Design

Packaging design, mainly refers to the packaging of the exterior design and composition of the internal design. Successful packaging design, both inside and outside modeling, not only pursues balance, harmony, and unity, but also conveys the hidden style and meaning behind the modeling, which is what the designers strive to create.

In the post-modern period, the packaging design has been diversified. How can we make packaging become a unity of diversity rather than the addition or concentration of various parts? The integrity of Gestalt emphasizes that “partial addition does not equal the whole, and the nature of one thing does not depend on any one part but depends on the whole. The nature of the whole thing arising from this matter is the so-called "former tower quality." Gestalt is the whole of experience organized by visual perception activities (eye senses). Since it is an organization or structure, it must follow certain organizational principles. Specific performance in the following areas:

First, the proximity factor means that parts that are short or that are adjacent to each other are easily combined into a whole. The lines that wrap a face in a package, with lines of conciseness and continuity, lines that look in the same direction and thus appear to have the same fate, tend to be seen as an independent whole. Second, similar factors refer to components that have similarities in shape and are easily organized into the same unit. That is, in a packaging style, the degree of similarity of certain parts in certain perceptual properties helps us to determine the degree of intimacy between these parts and thus constitute the whole.

Third, the gestalt factor refers to an irregular, imperfect figure. Observers try their best to change it and make it a complete and continuous whole. It is an important manifestation of the development of packaging designers' ability to create greater forms of meaning or stimulation through incomplete forms. The incomplete shape of true contagion is not equivocal. It is through the omission of certain parts that highlights some other key parts, and further that these prominent parts contain a kind of “pressure” to a certain gestalt “movement”. ". This is a movement that uses "tension" to make the partial form of the package as a whole.

Judging from the integrative theory of Gestalt, the completeness of the internal and external structure of the packaging is determined by the above three principles of gestalt. The combination that meets the gestalt principle shows the characteristics of harmony and coordination, and vice versa.

Various avant-garde and open design ideas in the post-modern period have conveyed rich information to us. The design of post-modernism, through a seemingly casual approach, has a historical and rich visual art form. It profoundly expresses a complex psychological structure and aesthetic changes experienced by people after the period of modernist rule. The application of post-modernism design to packaging actually gives packaging a new sense of the times, widens the level of packaging, and renews the expression of packaging. In banter, joy and gaudy, new artistic situations and design languages ​​were created. In the post-modern era, packaging presents a new form of decoration and design that intersects with each other, embodies people's new understanding of packaging design, and has strong individual characteristics. It is hoped that the research of Gestalt psychology holistic theory in the post-modern era packaging design not only provides theoretical support for the discussion of packaging design theory, but also can play a practical guiding role in the practical application of packaging design in the post-modern period.