Food packaging design reflects the sense of taste

A wide array of food packaging is displayed on the shelves. How do package designers communicate taste information to consumers? With this fresh and interesting topic, the reporter interviewed relevant experts.

Yin Yeze (National Committee Member, China Bao Xie Design Committee, General Manager and Creative Director of Kunming Dibang Planning Design Co., Ltd.)

Color is the main method for designers to express food taste

We know that people use the eyes to observe the world around them. The information observed by the eyes is fed back to the brain through the optic nerve. The brain makes analysis and judgment and stores the relevant information. This is a layer of human perception of matter. There is also the experience of analyzing and understanding the objective laws of human beings inherited from generation to generation in the long-term survival and development of human beings. This is another aspect of spirit and culture. It is through the interaction of matter and spirit that human beings can correctly understand the world, transform the world, and push things forward. The same holds true for the cognition of human cognition. We understand the food and its unique colors through the eyes, and through this interaction between matter and spirit, we have rich associations with colors and form some cognitions with common laws. It also includes the resolution and association of taste.

Since the taste is not only sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and spicy, it also has a strong and light taste. To express so many taste sensations on the packaging and to convey the correct taste information to consumers, the designer must perform according to the above methods and laws of human understanding of things:

The red fruit gives a sweet taste to people. Therefore, red is mainly used to pack sweet taste. Red also gives people a warm, festive, revolutionary association.

Therefore, the application of red in food, tobacco, and wine has a happy and enthusiastic meaning. The yellow is reminiscent of freshly baked pastries and seduce tempting aromas. Therefore, yellow is often used when expressing the flavor of food.

The orange-yellow color lies between red and yellow, which conveys a sensation of taste, such as orange, which is sweet and slightly sour.

Fresh, tender, crisp, and sour taste and taste are generally expressed in the green series.

What is interesting is that human food is rich and colorful, but in real life, few people can eat blue food. Therefore, the main function of blue in the design of food packaging is to enhance visual impact, and it is even more hygienic and elegant. The famous Danish blue pot cookie is an example.

As for the strength of taste, that is, the richness and lightness of taste, designers mainly rely on the strength and brightness of color to express. Examples include the following: using crimson and red to express sweet foods, using crimson to express sweet foods, and orange to show less sweet foods.

There are also some foods or drinks that express their taste directly with the color of the product that people are accustomed to. For example, dark brown (commonly known as brown) becomes a special color for coffee and chocolate.

In summary, we can understand that color is the main method for designers to express food taste, but there are also some tastes that are not easily expressed in color, such as: bitter, salty, hemp, and spicy. Designers need to use the special atmosphere of font design and packaging rendering design to express these tastes from the spiritual and cultural level, so that consumers can recognize the transmitted taste information at a glance.

Food taste performance is a product of human understanding of things and the transformation of the world. With the rapid development of the market economy and the rapid advancement of science and technology, the performance of food taste will become more and more abundant.

Shen Liang (Executive Director of Shanghai Business Planning Co., Ltd.)

Use "Sensation" to express "taste"

There is a kind of rhetoric in literature called "sense of sensation". The popular explanation is to state the unspeakable situation in another comparable form. The reason why "sense of feeling" is mentioned is because in the field of packaging design, this phenomenon also exists in fact, and it can be used properly to promote the promotion of products. Especially in the field of food packaging, the use of such methods is even more apparent.

The biggest difference between food packaging and daily consumer goods packaging is that when food products express product attributes, they must fully express their appetite and perceptual association. If they only stay in the design expression, they are “what” without further deepening. How "how" is expressed, then this product is on the shelf, and sales can be imagined without advertising support.

If the company is carrying out food packaging design, it first considers the performance of two levels in the graphic design: the "mouthfeel" and the "tongue sensation," and on the basis of these two points, it will further proceed from the packaging structure and materials. Use, industry standards and other aspects continue to improve. The "mouthfeel" here refers to the chewing sensations, such as being soft, sticky, firm, crunchy, smooth, etc., all belonging to the category of taste; and the perceptual tastes such as sweet, sour, salty, and spicy are those of the sense of tongue. Most packaging designs only pay attention to the tongue, but often ignore the performance of the taste. As a result, it has not been able to present the characteristics of the product and cannot be said to be a lack.

Through the rational use of color and the interrelationship of colors, it is easy to express the “tongue” of food. On this basis, continue to use the "sense of sensation" technique to express the taste as much as possible. To express the taste, not only through the use of color, more can be expressed through the special design of the packaging container's form, material, and screen graphics. For example, cool colors can be used in combination with hard-edged style graphics and broken line patterns to express crunchy foods at the entrance. To fully express the taste and tongue of food, apart from relying on color and graphic elements, the effect of photographs is also very powerful. Especially for some food products with good shape, the product details are fully displayed to stimulate purchasers through exquisite photographic images. Appetite.

There are many excellent cases on the market. Nihon Kirin launched two tea drinks last year and this year: raw tea and tea. The two tea beverages are completely different in terms of shelf performance. Looking at these two packages from a consumer perspective, you can feel that raw tea is a cool type of tea beverage that produces a refreshing drinking sensation that is more intense in flavor than the smell of tea. The smell of tea is slightly sweet, but it is a taste of tea.

In fact, it is true that the two tea beverages presented completely different perception associations through packaging. From the bottle type and bottle body color of raw tea, its product attributes and performance performance points can be felt, and the smell of tea blue bottle bottle design and transparent bottle body clearly means that consumers can have more room for taste. .

Rethinking China's liquor packaging is too vulgar and difficult to describe, it is hard to come up with several kinds of packaging, it seems that as long as it is alcohol packaging, we must use gold cards to print, and then use up hot stamping, spot colors, bumps, lasers, sandblasting, etc. Series printing process and then fast. In fact, even with the same liquor, the taste is not the same, some mellow, smooth entrance; some of the alcohol is not miscellaneous, the entrance is strong; some more after the entrance of the aftertaste; some of the more specific wine. But now from the packaging, almost all of them are like one. In fact, in the packaging design of wine, it is entirely possible to change the concept and use the “sense of sensation” effect to fully express the characteristics of different flavors of wine.

In addition, the proper use of packaging containers can make products produce different visual effects. The sprite--crystal-brilliant, cool-feeling feeling stems from its smooth packaging container shape and the combination of grass green color and abstract water marks, which produced good results. It is much more difficult for mineral water with high product homogeneity to show differences in taste. However, the light blue bottle of Nestle's mineral water has a much higher grade than the normal white bottle. The pure and refreshing taste revealed by the refraction is undoubted.

Wang Ning (Shenzhen Chen Xiaoming Corporate Image Design Company)

Designing a "taste sense" with Chinese characteristics

The "taste sense" of a product should be a unified design of the designer's visual and psychological effects on the product.

A food package, first brought to the consumer is the visual and psychological first feeling - sense of taste, its quality directly affects the product sales market. Undoubtedly, packaging is an art that promotes goods to consumers. It is a bridge between goods and consumers. It transforms the external and intrinsic characteristics of food into a vivid design style in order to stand out in a wide range of shelves. Attract consumers' attention.

The special understanding of the specific taste and value of a product embodies the designer's aesthetic tendency and shows the designer's creativity in formal processing. The packaging design can be said to be the digestive agent that the product packaging brings to the consumer's first impression, combined with the characteristics of the product itself. Packaging design is actually a process of interaction with customers. To attract consumers, we must make products with a sense of taste! It is not a single design of art or design, but a composite subject based on marketing, consumer mind, material technology, three-dimensional composition and plane composition. To make products with a sense of taste, we need to focus on changes in the market, changes in retail terminals, changes in consumer fashion, changes in materials technology. These changes brought new space for packaging design to incorporate brand culture and make sense of the taste of the goods!

Packaging design is performed within a limited picture, which is a spatial limitation. At the same time, the packaging is sold to the buyer for a brief period of time. This is a limitation of time. This kind of space-time restrictions requires that packaging design cannot be blind and complete, and that everything should be equal to nothing. The design must be "simple but not simple, simple but not monotonous," and the key to the determination of the three aspects of the goods, consumption, and sales of relevant information to be compared and refined to improve the product's sense of taste and sales.

I think everyone should have seen some Japanese packaging. Their designs generally give people a purer and cleaner feeling. They use the essence of design and products to be artistic, and they are fashionable and practical. One thing they are worth learning is that they combine East and West cultures to design. As China's design should also have Chinese characteristics, it depends on how we use it flexibly. Learning is the way we need to go now. Only in this way can we design fashion packaging products with Chinese characteristics of “taste sense”!

Zhu Ning (Department of Design, School of Fine Arts, Hunan Normal University)

Food packaging causes visual taste hints by visual

When you walk into a supermarket and face a wide range of foods, what makes you buy this, not that? In addition to advertising, price and other factors, food packaging is also a very important factor. The color of many foods is not aesthetically appealing, but it must be expressed through various techniques to make the shapes and colors more perfect and rich. Successful food packaging can not only quickly catch the eye of consumers, but also make people think that the food in the package is fresh and delicious, resulting in immediate impulse to purchase. This is where the taste of food packaging hints at work.

Psychology refers to the sensation in other areas caused by a feeling as a common feeling. It is based on this principle that the association and expectation of the taste of the food in the package caused by seeing a certain food package. What kind of food packaging can get people's good feelings and produce good taste hints?

Start with the color. Color is the most important part of food packaging design, and it is also the information that consumers can receive the most quickly. It sets a tone for the whole packaging. When we see a certain color, we remind people of all kinds of things or think of things related to color. Some colors can give people