Principles and Value of Cultural Design

Abstract

Besides their individual functional use, design works have three approaches to attract viewers:

• Firstly feelings: Feelings are the first element to attract people. Though it is a superficial element, feelings are the bridge and gate to guide further successful cognition. People will become interested and continue their cognition process only when design works have a visual impact formed by elements like aesthetic perception and novelty.

• Secondly emotions: Emotions are activated by feeling and enforced by memory and imagination. With the activation and enforcement of different emotions, our cognition of a certain work also evolves from the noticing stage and the stage of getting interested to the liking or disliking stage.

• Thirdly uderstanding: Understanding is formed by psychological activities like analyzing, synthesizing, comparing, judging and reasoning. From superficial appearance to inner essence, understanding manages to grasp the nature of something. To achieve understanding, we need the joint participation of previous experience and knowledge, interaction between image and language and cooperation between emotion and logic. Feelings and emotions need to be consolidated or corrected as a result of understanding.