| With the upsurge of nostalgia, an increasing number of brands are emerging and there is a great variety of nostalgic products. As a part of the national wealth, the development of nostalgic products is not only a problem of the enterprises themselves, but also a problem of the protection of the social cultures. Therefore, it has important and special significance for the economy, the society and the culture. However, a further development of nostalgic products is impeded due to the fact there still exist many issues on them at present. For example, the brand positioning of nostalgic products are vague; the personality and image design of them are out of date; and the quality of the products are poor, etc. Only realizing the renaissance and the appreciation of the brands of nostalgic products, the nostalgic products can be full of new vitality and become an important topic in business and society.This article makes an analysis and investigation on the nostalgic products from the perspective of semiotics by taking the image design of time-honored brands as examples. First, we give an introduction on semiotics, image design of products and related theory of the nostalgic products and the nostalgia culture, which lays a theoretical foundation for the further study on this problem. Second, we analyzes the constitute of the image of the nostalgic products from the point view of the symbol structure and symbolic elements. By combination of design examples of time-honored brands, we obtain a cognition on the specific constitute of the visual and conceptual recognition of nostalgic products, as well as the details on the shape, color and material factors of them. Such multifaceted analyses allow us to have an in-depth knowledge on nostalgic products. Then, combining with case study, we analyze concretely the current situations and problems on the time-honored brands from the point view of the visual and conceptual recognition. For instance, the logo design of products is lack of personality; the packaging and advertising design is lack of change; there is no enough attention on the nostalgia culture; and the prestige image of products should be improved. Finally, due to the above-mentioned problems, we propose a strategy about creative design from the point view of the visual and conceptual factors. We hope that our research in this article could provide new ideas on the brand building of the nostalgic products. |
