Book binding design aesthetic construction judgment

With the entry of mankind into the 21st century, modern printing technology, digital technology and other scientific and technological means have developed rapidly. Book publishing has entered the era of digitization and imagery. Aesthetic judgment plays an increasingly important role in the process of book information dissemination. Book binding, as an activity with both communication and aesthetic meaning, is combined with the interpretive and descriptive content information in the aesthetic visual form, with a broader visual space, intuitiveness, and artistic effect on the audience. Image thinking and abstract thinking make book media play an unprecedented energy. At present, the theoretical study of book binding is more concerned with the aesthetic performance of books as an art form. However, from the perspective of readers and publishing companies, there is little research on aesthetic judgment of book binding. From a multi-angle perspective, the problem of visual aesthetic judgment in book binding has not yet been given sufficient attention.

In the aesthetic construction of book binding design, there are two kinds of judgments objectively: fact judgment and value judgment. Whether or not a book's binding design uses aesthetic rules such as color contrast and balanced harmony, whether the latest printing production techniques are used or not, is a fact judgment; some people say it is good, and some people say it is not good. This is a value judgment. The so-called fact judgment refers to the analysis and judgment of the existing modeling laws and formal beauty rules in the design of book binding; the so-called value judgment refers to the binding of books to different subjects and objects in the process of cultural dissemination of books as a carrier in book binding design. The value reflects the judgment.

The status quo: the aesthetic transmission and the reader's aesthetic appreciation have not been effectively integrated

At present, the overall level of bookbinding design in China's publishing industry has been raised to a new level, showing a prosperous scene. More than 90% of the people engaged in book design work in the country have received advanced art design education. In this education background, they can more skillfully use the rules of factual judgment such as modeling laws and formal beauty rules in the design process of book binding. Methods, process and creatively design content information for books.

However, a new problem that cannot be overlooked is that the professional education received by designers of book binding has led them to pursue the perceptual art in the design process of book binding. They only focus on artistic expression and have little or no awareness that books are used as information The identity of the carrier. While the art of bookbinding has been increasing year by year, the aesthetic sense of bookbinding and the aesthetic appreciation of readers are not effectively linked. The China Reading Newspaper once discussed this issue and criticized the main misunderstandings in the current book binding, such as “make a girl's make-up and only superficially”; for example, “too pursuing a form to interfere with normal reading” has been criticized. Referring to the “principle of information dependence model” (a theoretical description of the effects of mass communication in American communication studies, proposed by Melvin Defleur et al. in the 1970s), the effectiveness of mass communication depends on the medium, The interaction between society and the recipient. From the point of view of the reader (reader), book binding, the effect of which on the content of the book depends on the recipient's psychological acceptance process. This process involves multiple factors such as culture, psychology and emotions, which are abstract and complex. One phenomenon that is often seen in actual publishing work is that in the book design phase of the book design, judgments and trade-offs for various solutions are often a headache for publishers and designers. Finalizing the final plan may depend on the designer's personal aesthetic judgment (factual judgment) or the result of the aesthetic experience compromised between the designer and the selected planner. Whether the book binding can withstand the test of the market, whether it meets the reader's lack of aesthetic taste and judgment basis. In addition to the factual judgments based on the aesthetic laws, the current book binding design work generally lacks a systematic and systematic value judgment theory and method guidance. In fact, in the first half of the 20th century, a group of literary people including Lu Xun, Feng Zikai, Wen Yiduo, Ba Jin, Cao Xinzhi, and Qian Junji had made artistic expressions of books in the field of book binding design. It is beneficial to try out, among which there are about 60 kinds of books directly designed by Lu Xun to cover the title of the book, or to design copyright pages, title pages, and editions. "Outside Fiction Collection" is the first book he designed. The book includes prefaces, abbreviations, end-of-volume appendices, author biography, and notes. The cover is commensurate with the content table, creating a new design concept that was a creative design at the time. Lu Xun, Wen Yiduo, Feng Zikai, and other literary scholars paid attention to the social role of book binding design and paid attention to values ​​such as cultural values, artistic features, ethnic styles, and world consciousness. They placed book binding art within a broad social and cultural perspective and enabled book binding. The design has an important cultural value connotation, and it still has a far-reaching influence and reference significance for today's book binding design. A gratifying phenomenon is: In recent years, the publishing houses of Sanlian Bookstore, Guangxi Normal University Press, Hebei Education Publishing House and other domestic publishing houses have maintained a high degree of bookbinding design with a distinctive cultural concept and emphasis on the cultural value and artistic value of the books. At the same time, the taste of the art has taken into consideration the multiple attributes of book binding design in visual arts, cultural inheritance, and corporate cultural characteristics. It has introduced value judgment considerations into the work of designing book bindings to make the book binding mature and elegant. The rational and agile attitude has created a new path in the field of bookbinding art, and has also provided useful inspiration and reflection to many other publishers who are still exploring.

Function: Improve the readability and appeal of information dissemination

The relationship between the media and visual communication design is interactive. The media not only embodies the design, but also brings limitations to the design. The design is not only subject to the media, but also one of the media's driving forces. The factual judgment in the aesthetic construction process of book binding design plays an important role in enhancing the beauty of books and increasing the energy of the spread of books culture. As Greenberg said, "art is the media." By virtue of the factual judgment in the aesthetic process, people more expressively express and learn the world. With the spread of aesthetic elements, the audience spontaneously feels, recognizes, associates, empathizes, and reasoning. It stimulates the senses, teases imagination, and stimulates beauty. As a result, the cultural communication carried by the book has broken through its limitations and expanded in a wider space and time. At the same time, these visually sensible forms contained in the aesthetic sensibility and the aesthetic tastes contained therein, as well as the psychological pleasure of accepting information, greatly reduced the difficulty of information reading and improved the readability of information dissemination. And infectious.

The invention of metal movable type printing in Germany in the 15th century marked the time when humanity entered the era of mass communication. In the more than 400 years since then, the print media has been the only medium used in the human mass communication. The earliest mass media in the development of human communication in the history of mankind was book publishing. The communicative attributes and visual artistic attributes of books determine that book binding design must be a “dance with shackles”. This “chain shackle” is intangible and abstract, and its essence is the value orientation of different judgment subjects in the aesthetic sense of books. For a book or a set of books, elegant fonts, pleasing pictures, novel compositions, well-organized layouts, wonderful tactile paper, and advanced printing techniques are relatively independent elements. Art performance is not difficult. . Instead of rigidly conforming to the aesthetics of the form, uniting these elements in a large network fully reflects the overall value of harmony with different subjects such as designers, publishers, readers, and book cultural content, and effectively conveys the beauty of books. Fully recognize the value relationships existing in the design of book binding, and the different value orientations and reference standards for book binding design among different value judgment subjects such as designers, readers and publishers.

Trends: Times require framing for deep beauty

The following kinds of value judgments reflect the value requirements of the book binding, which has both communication properties and artistic aesthetic attributes, and are the embodiment of the comprehensive values ​​of book content, designers, and publishers.

Firstly, the main content is determined by the content of the book culture, and the value of harmony between the book binding form and the cultural content is sought.

Second, the value of book framing designers is used to judge the subject's value, and the value requirements of the visual physics of books' aesthetic characteristics are presented.

Third, judge the subject with book publishers as a value, and value orientation of cultural values ​​with corporate characteristics reflected in book binding.

Fourth, judge the subject with the value of readers, and agree with the comprehensive value of book binding.

Review the book-binding scheme and details with the concepts of fact judgment and value judgment, convey the aesthetic sense of the book accurately, objectively and artistically, obtain the reader's aesthetic resonance, and determine the positioning of the publishing companies with different style characteristics and subdivide books from the macro The readership and other aspects have a very important role.

It is worth noting that the ever-matured and rational book market is a mechanism for the development of value determination of book bindings, not just a reflection of value judgments. With the development of the times, the prosperity of economy and culture, and the progress of science and technology, different era characteristics will inevitably inject new requirements and characteristics into the value judgment of book binding design, so that books will continue to produce more novel forms while also making books The aesthetic expression has a deeper meaning.