Sustainability of Cultural Semantics: A Case for Unlocking Fashion Design with Experimental Inks

Nagai [1] emphasized that design works can convey culture, art, technology, and professionalism and are a medium of communication between designers and viewers. Modern design should not only meet the needs of modern society but also reflect the value of traditional cultural heritage. Knowledge is constantly being updated and transformed, thus adding momentum to the practice of creativity. Activating ink, used for interpreting the code of fashion design, inherits traditional culture and expands design ideas. The case studied in this work is based on developing a method of using the ink design language with cultural characteristics in the practice of creativity and using this method to solve the problem in an actual design conversion application [2].

Ink art advocates the ‘simple’ which also implies plain, and this is reflected in the discipline of color, namely, black and white, the color language of ink. By controlling the proportion of ink in water and understanding the law of change of the color levels, the practice of using experimental ink has obtained the training of advanced gray. It is the change in the amount of water that gives ink an endless gray tone to express nature’s characteristics. If the color is strong, the impact is real, whereas if the color is light, the performance is illusory. This is the design language that brings out rich changes in a single color.

A line, a flow of emotion, is a design method that shows the shape, feeling of quantity, volume, sense of movement. It involves turns of line, false or true line, long or short line, light or heavy line, and other various techniques of designing. The use of the same lines produces different design languages in different spaces and expresses the inherent strength of culture by enhancing the aesthetic realm of emotion. In creative practice, using very few languages one can express many spatial artistic conceptions, which fully reflect the design of ink semantics, simple, abstract, and vivid.

Description of the practice of experimental inks

The focus on ink information influences the depth of our design and direction of expression. The design of the cultural language is a knowledge system for the simultaneous development of collaborative technology product design. The activation of cultural symbols through fashion design involves the process of obtaining and transforming the design language from the two-dimensional representation of ink to a multidimensional presentation [3]. It is the linkage of all aspects of knowledge disciplines. It is multidimensional and needs to coordinate the cooperation of all parties to produce a new cultural design in a new era. In the design of the case construction, the ink language is taken as the research object, and through the interaction of practice, disciplines are developed to construct the intersection of the specific relationship between the design language and product design.

Practical design research combines empirical research with theoretical model-driven design [4]. The design language derivation of experimental ink is based on knowledge application system management [5]. Cultural semantics are conveyed to meet the needs of emotions, and the practice process fully revolves around the cultural meaning of ink. The arrows in the left part of Figure 1 symbolize the direction of creative information and design thought flow. All boxes have been labeled with self-explanatory titles to indicate the project-related content that is executed at each stage of processing. The three separates but interrelated blue parts represent a breakdown of the sustainable implementation process that unlocks cultural semantic creativity. This model is a generalization and summary of the previous research literature review. Moreover, it provides a theoretical framework support for the design and conversion of cultural semantics in the next step.

Figure 1:Model construction of practical experimental ink design language based on knowledge fluidity. This picture shows the practice of experimental ink conversion into fashion design.

The creative practice process consists of three progressively driven cycles: cognitive language exploration, practice of ink semantics, and conversion of creativity into designs.
A. Creators can freely use the characteristics of the ink language based on subjective thinking, free from the constraints of images and technology and support divergent thinking, which requires rich emotional guidance to create meaningful forms.
B. The acquisition process of the design language involves finding the inner part of the emotions through visualization, and the creative practice of using ink is a static language description for presenting dynamic visual emotions. Language can transform the image into a form of ink, and it also has the ability to organize and process design images. The construction of personal lateral thinking and vertical knowledge, and the emotional, visual, and dynamic experiences are integrated into the creative practice of ink-water.
C. The form of aesthetic rules is used to deconstruct and reconstruct the ink effects in the design, and the spatial form is combined with the creativity of using the ink language method to reflect the fashion and convey a certain theme and connotation. Focus is kept on combining the abstract visual and emotional responses produced by ink, integrating the perception obtained in practice into the prototype clothing design, and incorporating the concept of ink language in the clothing design process [6].

Excellent design works often convey a kind of spiritual aspect through vivid visual language. It is the outcome of an attempt to create a new design thinking model based on the existing resources of ideology and culture, and thus solve the problems in the modernization of the design.

Fashion tasks developed through experimental ink are active, and the uncertainty of ink language unleashes design thinking. Experiments have shown that the mutual penetration of contemporary design concepts and the design language triggered by ink can bring out the profound charm of cultural heritage from these design works. The artistic conception created by ink realizes the practicability of the traditional cultural context in the design, increases the connotation of fashion design and expands the activation of culture. To ensure the inheritance of cultural semantics, it is necessary to study and practice many design themes. This can lead to the acquisition and conversion of ink semantics becoming a valuable circulatory system.

This work was supported by the [Humanities and Social Science Research of Liaoning Provincial Department of Education, China. No. J2020079]; [Key Research Project of Education and Teaching Reform of Dalian Polytechnic University. No. JGLX2021017].

1. Nagai Y (2015) A sense of design: The embedded motives of nature, culture, and future. In: Taura T (Ed.), Principia Designate-Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design, Springer, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 43-59.
2. Nagai Y, Noguchi H (2003) An experimental study on the design thinking process started from difficult keywords: Modeling the thinking process of creative design. Journal of Engineering Design 14(4): 429-437.
3. Du B, Nagai Y, Kim E, Yuizono T, Wang M (2019) Acquiring design language: Creativity of experimental ink semantics conversion. Proceedings of the 21^st International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education.
4. Neshane H, Desiree S (2021) The generative tool: A design journey in fashion education. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education 14(1): 28-36.
5. Kim E, Horii H (2016) Analogical thinking for generation of innovative ideas: An exploratory study of influential factors. Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge and Management 11: 201-214.
6. Ni CC, Lin R (2022) From landscape painting to fashion design: A case study of the “wearing landscape” design project. Trends in Textile Engineering & Fashion Technology 7(1).