Aesthetics of Sustainability: Research on the Design Strategies for Emotionally Durable Visual Communication Design

Abstract

Lately, most studies on sustainable design from the perspective of emotional durability focus on product design, particularly on exploring how do product functions direct consumers’ emotional changes after the product is used, but overlook the significant impact of consumers’ visual impression of the product on their judgment. Therefore, this paper aims at finding out how to maintain the emotionally durable connection between consumers and products with the help of visual communication design so as to provide guidance for prolonging the service life of products and reducing the waste and consumption of resources. Based on literature reviews on sustainable design, visual communication design, and emotionally durable design, this paper firstly adopted the case study method to analyze more than 85 high-quality design practice cases and put forward preliminary design strategies. The behavior research method was then applied to analyze the consumer behavior involved in the preliminary design strategies, and those design strategies were upgraded according to the analysis results. Based on the above analysis and research work, this paper proposed six design strategies to improve the emotional durability of visual communication design, namely, Enjoyment, Functionality, Narrativity, Symbolism, Interaction, and Innovation. In the area of sustainability, the design strategies proposed in this paper provide a new design mode for emotionally durable visual communication design and make products to be more acceptable to consumers and long-term holding. Emotionally durable visual communication design can influence consumers’ aesthetics and lead consumers’ behavior toward more sustainable use of products.