The Exploration On The Cultural Graphic Elements Of Collegiate School Badge

Originating from emblem, the university badge is the unit of Yan (Language), Xiang (Image) and Yi (Meaning), and the end product of modern university system. It develops gradually into a relatively perfect system which gains much attention with the corresponding development of the university. It embodies image in its form and meaning in its content. The university badge sets images to show its meaning, fully expresses the humanistic spirit and cultural connotation of the university. Culture is the origin of graph, while cultural development keeps step with graphic design. University badge is therefore a production of the jointly development of graphs and culture. Therefore, this paper will dig into the graphic culture of the university badge, explore its origin deeply, influence factors, graphic implication, graphic artistic conception, manifestation of the generation of its graphic element, and the transmissibility of graphic culture, so as to have a new understanding of the university badge.This paper includes six parts. The first part is the introduction, which mainly introduces the reasons of choosing this topic, the background, status quo, meaning and innovation of researching the graphic culture of the university badge.The second part presents a summary of the university badge and its graphic elements. This part first explains the university badge by exploring its historical and cultural origin, then explains the graphic elements of the university badge to have a brief understanding of this artistic language. A preliminary introduction of the cultural graph of the university badge is given at last.The third part refers to the factors that influence the formation of cultural icons on university badges. It includes five factors of geographical environment, political factor, ethnic characteristic, scopes of academic disciplines, and different personalities of graphic designers, and related to the creation of cultural icons on university badges.The main part of this article, Part Four, carries out a deeper exploration of cultural icons on university badges. It first discusses imagery produced by the badges. The university badges are based on the combination of "ideas" and "images", the former gives birth to the latter, which in return implies the former. It is in this very process that university badges are created. Part IV proceeds to talk about "ideas", the messages implied in badges, which contents "connotative ideas" and "suggested pictures". The former is a succinct summary of the ideals of a university; the latter means the taste and state of mind presented by the imagery. Finally, Part IV writes about characteristic "images", namely icons, in university badges. Icons of dragon, phoenix, lion, snakes and other icons steeped in cultural implications are enumerated, as the university badges that bear those icons.Part V mainly includes the ways of rendering artistic expressions of cultural icons on university badges. There are two types of expression, the concrete and the abstract type. Different ways give rise to different shapes and cultural icons. Part V continues to talk about the pictorial elements-dots, lines, planes--that comprise cultural icons. Also, different ways of expression connote different cultural ideas.The last part writes about the role that cultural icons on a badge play in making people know what a particular university is like. Icon is carrier of ideas, and university badge is an important part of university culture. The two factors combine to highlight the role of cultural icons on university badges as advertisement. They are name cards as well as representations of spirit of their universities. This article keeps badge of Shandong University as the example. The article concludes by stating that auxiliary icons are needed in the advertising process, and that the creation of auxiliary icons on university badges is a process in which "ideas" give birth to and are implied by "images". By stressing the beauty, connotations and advertisement quality of auxiliary icons, the article makes an extension of the culture of university badge icons.To summarize, this article refers to the graphic culture of university badge icons. Only by a thorough exploration of the culture embodied in university badges and a deep understanding of ideas and pictures implied and suggested by icons on university seals can one have a better knowledge of the meanings presented by the icons on the seals, and effectively make the iconic world of university seals more accessible to the world and more readily remembered by the eye.