The Application Value of Dongba Characters in Modern Product Design
This article examines the value of applying Naxi Dongba pictographic script to modern product design. It surveys Dongba script's origins among Yunnan's Naxi people, its religious role, and the history of scholarly research (Chinese scholars in the 1930s-40s; foreign figures like Bacot, Rock, and Goullart), noting its 2003 UNESCO Memory of the World listing and use by designers such as Japan's Katsumi Asaba since the 1960s. It analyzes Dongba script's visual-symbol characteristics: expressing meaning through pictorial form (sun/moon/season characters) and the close bond between script and picture (examples like "pregnancy," "birth," "family"). The core argument identifies three potential design values: aesthetic (primal, unconstrained pictorial beauty in logos and icons), economic (souvenirs driving Lijiang tourism revenue, with a caution against commercial misuse/distortion), and educational (aiding children's character learning and cultural transmission). It concludes a systematic theory of Dongba script's design application is still needed.
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.