The Research On Symbol Phenomenon In The Product Design

People are currently in an age of information. Great change has taken place in people's aesthetic concept of design along with intenerate of science and technology structure and economy structure. Product designers turn to pay more attention to emotional design, local design and ecological design. More and more voices call for more humanity and nationality being expressed in design. The appearance of such terms as "reference", "semantics" and "metaphor" in design theory indicates designers' high regard for people's spirit and psychology. The essential motive of this paper is to further such regard.In the scope of product semantics, this paper presents a preliminary study of the symbolic function of product and the symbol phenomenon in product design, and then illustrates the conclusions with some design practices. This paper also presents a daring assumption to make the symbolic character of traditional utensil design reappeared in modern product design so as to set up an inner link between the modern design style and the traditional design style.This paper is made up of two parts. In Part 1 Symbol in Today, contemporary general theories of symbol at home and abroad are introduced into the field of product design and used for reference to educe a definition of symbol which is applicable for product design. Based on this, the paper goes on to research the root, the determinative factor, and the interpretation principle of symbol. The paper also attempts to produce a design procedure. In Part 2 Today Use of Traditional Symbol, the assumption mentioned above is presented and described after analyzing the impact of the thoughtway of traditional philosophy upon traditional utensil design.