Visual Communication Design in the Changing Chinese Society

: The study takes Chinese visual communication design in different eras as a vector to see the demands and influences of society on design works and designers through these refractions in design works. The main design aesthetic characteristics of "visual communication" in China in different design periods, technological development iterations, evolutionary reasons, and structural changes in the historical development of the industry are discussed as a whole. The macroscopic influences and subtle transformations of design in different historical contexts, such as socio-political, economic development


knotting a rope to remember
The earliest human use of rope began to "for the design of communication", perhaps that can be said to have been able to trace back to the "ancient knotted rope and rule" before.And "Zhou Yi justice" and can be derived into "Yu Zheng nine Yi" and said: "the ancient people do not have writing, it has an oath of things, things greatly knot its rope, things small knot its rope, knot the number of things, with the number of things; each hold to test each other, but also enough to rule each other."That is to say, the knotted rope in our human origin at that time already is a kind of people have in the visual sense of the existence of another symbolic meaning of things used to remember and used to observe the identification.Regardless of what it is doing additional costly things, big or small things, can be almost completely by a long knotted rope method to be accurately recorded and identified one by one.Although this kind of knotting method can play a very limited role in improving the quantitative accuracy and identifiability of the recorded information, I still feel that it should be or can be said to be another new attempt that is already difficult to try successfully.

Engraved symbols
Petroglyphs are history books carved on rocks and walls (fig.1-2)，visual texts and symbols that have been passed down from ancient ancestors, and are an important beginning of visual communication.Rock paintings are made by chiseling and involve animals, people, simple symbols, the sun, moon and stars, all closely related to human production and life.The subjects can be broadly divided into the following categories: hunting, animal husbandry, warfare, nature worship and deity worship, and dance, with hunting and animal husbandry being the main subjects.(fig.3-4) One is that red pigment is easy to find and can be used without processing.In Yunnan and Guangxi, hematite powder for painting was found around the petroglyphs, and red pigment vessels were found near the petroglyphs in Yunnan.Secondly, the red color is durable and eye-catching, and primitive people discovered the beauty of red early and used it for decoration.As the red color for rock painting, it is a contrasting color in nature, especially in the south, on the rock wall surrounded by blue sky, blue water and green plants, using red to draw the image, it will produce a strong effect of "a little red in the middle of ten thousand green bushes".This is the beauty of contrast, the beauty of focus.The artistic technique of contrast is also sown in the Chinese aesthetic, such as the painting of ancient Chinese architecture, the painting with heavy brush and the costumes of Beijing opera, all boldly use the technique of contrast.[2]

The emergence of trademarks
The trademark used in our country as early as in ancient times was initially a more common form of commercial expression and a front for a kind of banner propaganda.It is mainly used to refer to a kind of business conduct in the specification of the use of industry signs, a kind of business in order to distinguish from the restaurant and the business of another industry conduct signs, in fact, it should only be in our country throughout the Spring and Autumn Warring States, Qin, Han and North and South Dynasties period will have formally appeared, but for China at that time, the specific graphics, text, color, etc. on the wine flag refers to how, there is not yet seen However, there is no specific and clear historical record of the specific graphics, writing, colors, etc. on the wine flags in China at that time, or any new discovery with physical evidence.
[3]During the Tang Dynasty, with the further development of commerce, the earliest commercial symbols such as wine flags gradually became popular and had a fixed name.The poet Lu Guimeng of the Tang Dynasty described the restaurants of that time in his poem "A poem written in the early winter of the year by Hao Jumei" as follows: "The small stove is covered with a low front, and the wine is scented with ashes like last year."Bai Juyi, on the other hand, has the poem "selling wine from the green curtain while the pear blossoms are in full bloom".Here, the front and the green curtain both refer to the commercial symbol of the wine flag, but in terms of form and color to give us a preliminary understanding of the trademark at this time.The front, that is, the mantle form of the wine flag, long and hanging very high, and hanging very low, so that people know at first glance, so in the folk and "Wangzi" common name.And the color used is cyan.This was further confirmed in later poems and writings.The Yuan song "Hou Ting Hua": "Seven feet of cloth in front of the hotel door, come and go looking for customers."Cui Hao of the Qing Dynasty has a more accurate and comprehensive explanation in the "Commonplace Chapter Ware with Wangzi": "Wide Rhyme": Green Curtain, the restaurant Wanghaizi.According to the present three bridges north of the Wanjiang River, where the city's name Jia hanging signs, all call for Wangzi.Erroneous its word sound, is the cloud front." As a profit-oriented commercial advertising, is also accompanied by the emergence of business.The earliest advertisements were shouted verbal advertisements.The poem "Psalm -rogue": "The rogue's Chi, holding cloth and trade silk, bandits to trade silk, come that I seek."When people knew how to take physical products for sale and exchange, without shouting loudly for others to notice, advertising also arose.
With the emergence of commercial symbols such as wine flags, advertising also has the first time to have a performance carrier other than physical objects.The wine flag served both as a sign for the restaurant and as a way to advertise widely to attract customers, making it one of the earliest and most common forms of trademark and flag advertising in ancient China.
The earliest period of maturity in China for the use of trademark registration and trademark advertising design in ancient times occurred during the Song Dynasty.The Song Dynasty was a commercial era in which commerce flourished and developed.The wide circulation of commodities and the highly developed market led to the rapid development of trademarks and advertisements.Song Dynasty trademarks and advertising forms are not limited to wine flags.Almost all trades and industries had their own logos.The famous painter of the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming Shanghetu"(fig.5), depicted the most typical representative characters in about 20 places.These fronts involved in the industry, there are hotels, silk store, framed store, store, medicine "store, tea store, etc., they are both the industry logo, but also the industry advertising, can be said to be a set of trademark design and advertising design as a -body, and the shape of different, a variety of forms, a variety of, and compete with each other.A "Qingming Shanghetu", can be called the ancient Chinese trademark and advertising design art of the great collection.

Modern Chinese Visual Communication Design
When the gates of the country were once again opened by Western guns and cannons, the continued importation of advanced Western cultural achievements from abroad in large quantities would cause a dramatic change in the Chinese historical and cultural landscape, which had been traditional for thousands of years.With the increasing prosperity of the French Concession culture, the development of the modern Western material civilization gradually began to change the Chinese people's attitude of contempt or antagonism towards the traditional Western culture, especially after the cultural pattern of the "Chinese and the Western" was completely broken by the Westerners, the Chinese mainland people were able to begin to contact the modern Western society and civilization earlier and more deeply.A certain envy and jealousy gradually replaced them.
For example, the name of Shanghai before the opening of the port has a division with the "eight scenic spots in Shanghai", namely, the sea and sky, the rising sun, and Huangpu autumn waves, and Longhua evening bell, and Wusong smoke and rain, and the night moon of Shilang, Nadu Cangjiao, Fenglou distant view and Jianggao snow clearing, from the meaning of the above names can also be roughly understood that they are mainly for the protection of nature -natural scenery resources or traditional Chinese farming culture.After the 1860s, there was a new "Ten Views of Shanghai North", and the word "north" already reflected the shift of Shanghai's urban center (the rented area was located in the north of Shanghai.From the perspective of the law of historical development, such a shift: China's feudal rulers focused only on Confucianism and Taoism, which were beneficial to maintain their rule, and preached feudal ethics, restored the old and conservative, despised industry and commerce, and disdained science and technology, such as printing, which was not only disregarded, but also regarded as a "strange and obscene technique" and restricted its development.
This is a world of difference from the social reality of Western capitalism, which attaches importance to science and vigorously promotes industry and commerce and makes them develop rapidly.
In the early 20th century, China's feudal rule was overthrown and society was transformed, so traditional printing could not meet the needs of political, economic, and cultural development, and was replaced by the advanced movable type mechanical printing technology of the West.
The changes that occurred in China's modern book business, both in content and form, reflect the characteristics of this period.
In the early 1950s, with the deepening of modern international business activities in China, some international companies already began to accept gifts with company merchandise printed with pictures of beautiful women, flowers and birds, and landscapes.(Fig 6-7) In addition to the picture of the product, some of the previews were also printed with the month of the year and the seasonal table, so as to quickly win the favor of the target customers and expand the publicity of their products.The frequent appearance of lithographed New Year signs and the rapid popularity of the month sign paper in particular have almost completely replaced the traditional Chinese woodblock prints, occupying the entire market, the old workshops that produced woodblock prints have long since gone out of business, and some of them can only make a living by printing out some door gods for the villagers to make New Year flower stickers.
It can be said that the commercial art design of the late Qing Dynasty had a strong semi-feudal and semi-colonial color is a reflection of the social life of that era.(Fig. 8-9) During the Xinhai Revolution, all kinds of newspapers sprang up.Some foreign privately owned and commercial newspapers also appeared in large numbers in China, and then some foreign-owned commercial newspapers, such as the newspaper "Shenzen" and the magazine "General News", were successively transferred to other Chinese publishers.The new commercial advertisements that emerged in this new period of society expanded and developed the structure of the content system and the means of propaganda of commercial propaganda advertisements as the traditional advertising medium, and advertisements of department stores, cigarettes, movies, medical products and various kinds of securities, banks, books and newspapers, as well as advertisements of various social units and personal announcements filled all kinds of commercial newspaper advertisements and magazine pages, which actively expanded and changed the previous traditional The structure and layout of the advertising pages were actively expanded.After the Qing dynasty was overthrown by the Kuomintang, the new regime of the Republic of China was not really revitalized, and the bloody rule of the warlords made the feudal society more and more decadent.In order to express their strong disappointment with the current political situation, some Republican writers began to write "romance novels" as a way to express their bitterness and dissatisfaction with national affairs.In the early years of the Republic of China, the "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies" series of novels were widely popular, and a large number of "romance" short stories and "sorrowful" novels were published.The content of many popular novels and new publications -.Some colorful paintings could sometimes be printed on the covers of magazines, such as the magazine "New Novel", which was officially launched in 1902, the magazine "Oriental Magazine", (fig.10) which was officially launched in 1904, the periodical "Novel Monthly", which was officially launched in 1910, and the magazine "Novel Monthly", which was published in 1914.The magazine was published by the Shanghai China Book Publishing Company in 1914, and the magazines after the reversal of the magazine, such as the "Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly School" magazine and publications such as "Saturday" magazine, published many novels entitled "romance" and "sorrowful love", with colorful landscape portraits and fashionable beauty portraits on the covers.In 1936, through the efforts of Lu Xun and others, a collection of essays by Qu Qiubai, an early leader of the Chinese Communist and a literary scholar, was published.There were two types of hardcover copies of Hai Shang Lin, one with a dark green spine with gilt lettering and gray linen surface, and the other with a dark blue velvet surface with gilt lettering on the spine.[4] The binding design was dignified and generous, with a fine overall effect, exceeding the general level of book art design at the time, reflecting Lu Xun's emphasis on the overall design of book art.
This poem was also the first book-length collection of large vernacular novels in modern Chinese literature created by the author's pseudonym Lu Xun at that time.The overall design of the cover is in a deep red color, symbolizing the blood of the sacrificial victims of our Chinese culture thousands of years ago.The rectangular black frame is arranged horizontally and vertically in the center of the book cover, which occupies about 1 or 3 of the cover, symbolizing the last line of the "Black Room" in the "No Window" mentioned earlier in the book, (fig.14)that is, in the darkest period of Chinese society.The fourth edition, first published in 1926, is almost entirely inscribed by the Lu Xun Society, with a black back and a white back in the Manchu seal script, in the form of a small seal script, which is heavy and simple.It is strong and powerful, and the rhythm is soothing, full of tension.The font design of the whole book cover is very fresh, simple and mature, and it fits harmoniously with the content of the real historical story presented in the brief pages of the book, showing that the author of the book has a strong and majestic brushwork and a strong and unique aesthetic and artistic style, rich in the color of Chinese national bones.
Figure 14: The novel was published by Lu Xun

Visual Communication Design after the Founding of New China
After the founding of the People's Republic, the war-era formation of the pursuit of simple and practical, practical, simple and unadorned modern design style aesthetic design style and those who advocate the traditional design style aesthetic reflecting the national tradition, folk art characteristics of the artistic interest have been continued and inherited to continue, leading to promote the development of Chinese design art aesthetic design art style and innovation design of some basic direction.Culture and art are completely subordinate to national ideology and politics, and the use of various extreme ideological and cultural political means to transform politics and various economic and administrative means to require "literature and art to serve politics" has further inflated the extreme tendency of this ideological reaction to be further strengthened with even greater force.
The emphasis on "literature and art for political service" is, (fig.15-16) in a historical sense, an emphasis on literature and art for political and movement service.However, the number of such posters for political propaganda purposes was relatively small compared with those for commercial propaganda purposes, such as the monthly signs and movie posters influenced by Hollywood in the United States.The meaning of the political movement became the main content of Chinese posters in the 1950s and 1960s.

Visual communication design under the reform and opening up
The period from the late 1970s in the early 20th century to the early to mid-1980s in the present century was one of the first and most prosperous periods for the development of advertising art in China.Advertisements were no longer considered harmful by the general public as "capitalism", but gradually replaced the political placards and propaganda paintings of political leaders like "Red Ocean" and "Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan" that were seen everywhere in the streets and alleys of China's cities and villages during the "Cultural Revolution", and became a clear sign of social change and progress in China.The "Red Ocean" and "Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan" (fig.19) became a clear sign of social change and progress in China.Some other local niche newspapers, magazines and journals in Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing and many other major coastal cities on the mainland also began to re-publish or stopped publishing advertisements one after another.As the doors of the country are increasingly opened, the promotion of foreign manufacturers' products will also enter our Chinese mainland.Foreign manufacturers' advertisements were initially commissioned to advertising agencies in Chinese mainland.Many Chinese and foreign advertising artists and designers of the Chinese era have learned from modern foreign advertising agencies to master the rich and complete knowledge of international modern commercial advertising concepts and new means of advertising creative design and production.
Advertisements of Japanese goods in the 1980s were almost all over Chinese mainland."In 1979, a Japanese advertising delegation came to Shanghai and Beijing to sign cooperation agreements with Chinese advertising companies.In 1979, a Japanese advertising delegation came to Shanghai and Beijing to sign cooperation agreements with Chinese advertising agencies.In the second half of 1983, the Shanghai advertising agency, after accepting this business, launched an overall advertising campaign from market research to advertising planning and operation.The modified Nescafe commercial and the chosen slogan "Tastes Great" were broadcasted and had a great impact on the newly emerged film and television commercial creation in Chinese mainland.
It also brought profound influence and inspiration to the newly emerged film and television advertising in Chinese mainland.In 1992, China's first "Corporate Image Strategy Seminar" was held in Beijing, at which the company "SCT" announced the introduction of CI design.An early example of the successful introduction of CI design in China was the promotion of the "Sun God" oral liquid advertisement by the "New Realm Advertising Company" in East China."The company was followed by "Jianlibao", (fig.20)"Wanbao",(fig.22) "Samsung", "Weili ", "Li Ning",(fig.21) "Lepai's" (fig.23)and other enterprises with a strong personality image, resulting in a great social reaction, so that CI design quickly spread in China, becoming the end of the 20th century China's advertising art design This led to the rapid spread of CI design in China and became an important display of Chinese advertising art design at the end of the 20th century."The year 1994 was even called the "Year of CI".Until today, the practice of CI design in Chinese mainland is still partial, exploratory and immature, and there are not many truly successful cases, but CI design is of great significance to the modern turn of advertising in Chinese mainland, as it fundamentally changes the nature, basis and function of advertising, turning it into a holistic, long-term, unified and diversified act combining science and art.From the perspective of the long-term development goals of Chinese society, CI design has a broad future.Figure 21: "Li Ning" Figure 22: "Wanbao" Figure 23: "Lepai's" The 2000 Beijing International Advertising and Graphic Design Annual Exhibition was held in Beijing, with dozens of professional graphic design institutions and associations of various advertising and printing production companies from the United States, Germany, Japan and China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan).The exhibition was judged by experts on the exhibitors' brand image design by the organizing committee to award the "China Outstanding Enterprise Brand Image Design Award", and to exhibitors to award the "ICD Award".The exhibition will showcase corporate brand image design, packaging design, advertising design, poster design, book binding design, web interactive design, corporate image VI system, corporate application works with the content of China's excellent corporate brand image design, image of Chinese professional design planning institutions, graphic design of Chinese higher art colleges, Chinese outstanding graphic designers, China Design Yearbook and "2000 Theme Poster Creativity", etc.The exhibition will showcase corporate CF films and outstanding advertising works.During the exhibition, special academic reports, ICD design salon, design talent recruitment, "China's excellent packaging designers" recognition and other activities will be held.Through the activities, enterprises and advertising art designers establish close contact, enterprises and design have a positive interaction, entrepreneurs and designers get more communication, marking China's modern visual communication art and design is moving towards a new and greater development in the future.

Conclusion
It can be said that the essence of human social development is the sum of human design achievements.Design work is rooted in our ideology, but it is also influenced by social economy.It is a political, economic, and cultural expression of the times in order to meet the needs of the public and the market.On the other hand, the spiritual foundation of design society is a subjective consciousness activity in which all human beings participate, and it is a superstructure common to all human societies.The development of an ideological system that evolves with the development of the material economic base.Historical materialism reveals that the complex development and changes of the human social structure are actually the end result of the repeated dialectical coordination between the two basic sectors of the human social structure -the state of social consciousness and the inner social-psychological level of existence, because the three different theoretical levels of design theory actually belong to The three different theoretical levels of design theory actually belong to three different constituent sectors within human society, the design concept and thought belong to the superstructure, and the results of design action directly belong to the economic base, while the practice of human design thought, as the realization of human free will, is itself a bridge between the superstructure and the economic base, which can gradually transform the natural world into an artificial world.It can gradually transform the natural world into the artificial world, and then transform the invisible social consciousness of the invisible world into a tangible social consciousness of the tangible world, and push the wheel of history forward.

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Candy box packing Figure 7: Milk packaging Chinese modern art Most of the authors of the novels were Chinese American fashion painters who had long been engaged in art activities in the United States and had been most influenced by modern China and the early art and Enlightenment movements in the Western world, such as Shen Po-tsun (1889-1920), Ding Ch'ien, but Du Yu (1896-1972), Cheng Man-tou, and several others.(fig.11-13)They reflect the unique aesthetic and aesthetic pursuit of traditional dress culture of the general public in the prosperous commercial environment of modern Western society and modern Chinese urban conditions.