Conveying Ningxia’s 8 Treasures Tea Cultural Values through Packaging Design: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Eight Treasures Tea" is a unique type of herbal tea from Ningxia province in China. It is recognized as a cultural legacy of Ningxia due to its unique recipe, medicinal properties, health benefits, and rich history of thousands of years. However, the public in China, especially the young generation, seems unaware of these cultural and nutritional characteristics of Ningxia's Eight Treasures Tea. A preliminary observation has shown that visual and verbal elements of the existing Ningxia's Eight Treasures Tea packaging design are insufficient to articulate its 'values' as a cultural object to the public. The study develops a conceptual framework based on a literature review to address this gap. It proposes a practice-based research methodology using various data collection methods, including visual analysis, semi-structured interviews, and reflective practice, to produce a creative packaging that can effectively embody the cultural values of Ningxia's Eight Treasures Tea. This study demonstrates the interrelated connection between research and training and the critical role of a practitioner as a researcher rather than just an information processor.

Green Design Strategy for Lushan Yunwu Tea Packaging Design

“…As design, manufacturing, and material science advance, tea packaging options diversify, including synthetic paper cans, laminated bags, glass jars, porcelain jars, wooden boxes, paper boxes, and nitrogen-filled or vacuum packaging. However, each material has its drawbacks, such as moisture vulnerability, susceptibility to damage, high production costs, or lack of aroma neutrality (Bai & Wong, 2022).…”

“…Attracting people's attention, excessive increase or expand the added value of tea, so that the drinks that should go to the public price become expensive luxury goods, in the final analysis is to use smoke and mirrors to expand market profits, anyway, the appearance of luxury packaging, give people, treat consumption, unit reception, etc., have face, how can also meet a lot of "sucker" vanity. Streets and alleyways are popular with a lot of very bloated packaging, that is, tea packaging inside and out of many layers, after stripping a layer of packaging, there may be only a small amount of tea, not to mention luxury, not to say noble, not only tea inferior, even packaging materials are also very inferior, For example, in the box padding thick foam layer, sponge layer, plastic layer is the current domestic gift packaging is extremely widespread phenomenon (Bai & Wong, 2022). These synthetic chemical liners not only make the goods become grandiose and inferior or flashy, the most terrible result is a great pollution to the environment, but also caused a great waste of social production resources, these non-degradable chemical synthetic materials are also one of the culprits of ecological destruction.…”