A Study on the Advertising Function of Package Design

-Chiefly as viewed from cosmetics design in Korea-

KIM Suk-bong(Major in Advertising Design The Graduate School of Industrial Design Hong-Ik University)

Today's package just going beyond the general level of consciousness in our daily life provides in acute competition with many factors a variety of experiences to our life. The package originally begun with the function of primarily protecting and carrying in safe the contents with in the package, puts in keeping pace with the change of the times a high added value upon the promotion of sale of commodities and its functions. Some package, as has been the case in the past with cosmetics, require by far more factors of added value to design due to the peculiarity of goods. The cosmetic being the kind of commodities to meet feminine aesthetic needs in which women are in pursuit of brilliance and thirst for preserving their youth, it needs the kind of package that can satisfy the formative factors and be fitted to the image of make-up. As consumers' consciousness of fashion today enhances, cosmetics pursue in quality their diversification, internationalization and individualization. The cosmetics package serving as a means to representing the idiosyncrasies of the products of that kind plays an important role in design. Accordingly the advertising function of package design is important not merely as a means for the promotion of sale but serves as opportunities for commodity purchase. Cosmetic design in its early stages hardly emerged from being used for manifestation of nomenclature of commodities. But the development of industrial economy brings about fierce selling competition in the market, and in addition, the visual effect of package plays an important role in sales.

This study intends to give a correct understanding of the significance of package design, and to inquire into the varieties of package design, especially into those of paper boxes, on the basis of the formative constituents integrated in package, and of its expressing methods. Although the sale of commodity of different kind, when having the same utility with another one, is crucially influenced in a buying motive by the package it has. Especially today, consumers' eye shopping is liable to lead to buying by an instant's impulse. In this sense, the design a commodity has as a function of purchase-encouraging advertisement cannot help being an important factors in inducing consumers to buy. If package, no matter what kinds of considerations it may take in its design, does not provide an opportunity to buy, it surely losts its one of the main functions. In order for package design to fully show its advertising function in consideration of selling, it is recommended that no contradiction should arise between the formative constituents integrated in the package and the contents within the package, and that the design should have its own unique idiosyncrasies.

The package design of cosmetics in Korea has neither its characteristics in the expressing method as well as in bent, and nor closely adhere to the consumer. The reasons may be ascribed to various factors, including imitating the design of foreign countries, insufficient studies and efforts for package. For the purpose of development of creative and unique products and their package design, it is required for us to pay more attention to the study on the essence and characteristics of commodities, simultaneously to convenience, fashion, marketability, psychological factors in design. Furthermore, to meet the abruptly changing consumers' needs, new package design should be actively cultivated. It seems that the good opportunities may be seized by which the cosmetics industry can be activated and then make great contribution to the development of society when we enhance our creativity by being familiar with the overflowing fashion information in the world and in terms of newly devised package material.