The Application Of Ethnic Visual Elements In Design Of Book Covers Referred To Ethnic Minorities In China

Ethnic books are important medium which play a significant role in transmitting party's policy and modern technical knowledge, broadcasting ethical culture and facilitating communication among ethical groups. Since China's reform and opening up, ethnic books have come into a flourishing period of development. Nevertheless, it still remains some problems in book cover design. In consequence, study on problems in cover design of ethnic books and analysis on the causes and countermeasures, is beneficial to enhance the quality of ethnic books, to enlarge the social influence and to broaden the study area of graphic design, which has significant academic and social value.The thesis argues that, visual elements of ethnic minority are the general designation of visual signals which reflect cultural characteristics and qualities of ethnic minority, which comprise the following four categories: characters, rayures and colour. This thesis elaborates separately the expression function and value of each category of visual elements in the cover design of ethnic books from different angles. Based on the case study of successful cover design of ethnic books, conclusions have been made as follows, a successful cover design must meet three requirements: first, visual elements of ethnic minority should conform to the theme of books; second, visual elements of ethnic minority should be synthesized and properly arranged; third, the contents of ethnic books and visual elements should be deeply comprehended and design arts should be proficiently mastered.The thesis analyse that the main problems occurred in cover design of ethnic books in our nation are lack of visual elements of ethnic minority, weak creativity in use of ethnic visual elements, improper express of visual elements, and overuse of visual elements. And the reasons are as following: cognitively, publishers haven't paid much attention to cover design of ethnic books; systematically, due to the small amount of publication of ethnic books and low economic benefits, publishers don't want to invest much in cover design; subjectively, most designers lack knowledge in the history and culture of ethnic minority and their visual elements.Based on the analysis above, this thesis finally gives five suggestions to solve the current problems: first, it is necessary to enhance the cognition for cover design of ethnic books, and finance the publication of ethnic books in various ways; second, strengthen the development of cover designer of ethnic books, enrich their knowledge of ethnic history and culture and also deepen their understanding of visual elements, and then enhance their skills of applying Morden design software and tools; third, apply the ethnic visual elements properly in cover design process complying with the basic requirements of cover design of ethnic books; fourth, innovate the expression of ethnic visual elements by using of modern design technology; fifth, combine organically elements of ethnic minority and time spirit; sixth, promote the taste of cover of ethnic books by nice binding material and perfect printing craft.