Wander Between Tradition And Modern

Since World War II, modern design has developed very fast with different appearance in different nations. People cared more and more about design by which they can express their respective national characteristics. The color, as one of three fundamental elements of design, has distributed its influence to almost every corner of our lives. During the long history, Chinese has obtained their distinctive idea of colors which developed from Spring-autumn era to Ming dynasty and formed a sort of comprehensive expression methods, while different nations and areas displayed their different characteristics. This article tries to analyses the reason of evolution of Chinese traditional idea of colors from political, cultural and technical perspectives by concentrating on the 5-color theory– the core of Chinese traditional idea of colors. By referring to the three main western color systems (Munsell color system,Ostward color system , P.C.C.S color system) and the analysis methods of modern color-geography,this article also discussed the confliction and confluence between the trend of modern aesthetic and Chinese aesthetic tradition. By studying the successful cases of modern design, this article also tries to find clues for how to express national and area characters in modern design.