Spiral-A Cognitive Study Of Eastern Visual Language

When the social civilization has developed into certain stage, its design language within the common visual scope would also change. The contemporary society has entered a“schematized era”, in which the design of visual patterns becomes even more glamorous. The representation of human production and labor is not relying solely on traditional written words, but more on schematized language, to carry out communication manifested by schematized signs, which is just similar to the hieroglyphic in earlier eastern civilizations. The core concept Spiral in the paper reveals that in spite of the ever-changing civilized society,there is still something repeating in our mindset and mentality. It is only a transformation of the imprint of times, while the repeatability of social culture just reflects one aspect of the space-time concept Spiral.The first three chapters in this paper mainly focuses on Spiral---- the core concept of this study. We make a carding and integration of the traditional eastern values on culture and nature from the conceptual thinking of Spiral. Traditional eastern culture is characterized by its respect to the regularity and rules of material world and its sustained development. The natural-value-based design thinking is based on the learning, changing and sublimation of the thinking of ancient people. The proposal of Spiral, which follows the some features of traditional eastern cultures, which go round and round, is a transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change. And we should adopt an attitude of inheriting and carrying forward.From chapter 4 to chapter 8, we conduct a research on the schematized designing premised on our core concept Spiral. The general orientation of our design research lies in the design thinking of traditional eastern culture, and it is done under the framework of the “five elements” demonstrated in the cultural value of eastern thinking. The research concerning colors is conducted according to the five colors of “five elements” theory. In accordance to the classification of color of “five elements” and color proportioning, we can have a very appropriate application into the designing of visual patterns. And as for the theoretical aspect of visual pattern designing, we make integration of graphic framework from perspectives such as astrology and TCM. Just as the “transformation” concept contained in Spiral, we can makeinnovations while breaking through the tradition. This is an upward spiraling application of structural layer combined with the thinking “five elements” theory. Finally we make graphic language integration of Spiral and the traditional graphic pattern design, and cite many cases of the application of Spiral’s swirls, which is a designing procedure representation of Spiral and also a new understanding of its designing application. In this regard, we highlight the visual designing concept of Spiral. Putting things into a spiraling way to conduct the schematized design representation will manifest the thinking of recycling design in Spiral concept.The core objective of my dissertation is to design a brand-new visual language designing system, which can break through the normal method and approach and be applied to our daily life freely, thus putting our design language into application based on schematization and making the “schematized era” more diversified and abundant. And it is also a change in design representation, a cognitive transformation on schematization, and a manifestation of social thinking mode with the time imprints of Spiral.