On the development of CI design in Chinese enterprises
Today in the 21st century, when we mention CI again, it seems out of date. Even in a very prosperous period, it did not give China The company has brought several successful examples, but the more it reaches its trough, the further we should look further.
American futurist John Nesbitt emphasized that the 21st century will return to the Age of the Dragon, and China will become a world power. With the development of China's market economy, corporate image must be established through modern design, and CI is a representative of modern design features.
The term CI (Corporate Identity) is not unfamiliar to a Chinese designer or entrepreneur. It became popular in the 1990s, but now it is languishing. As China joins the WTO and Chinese companies strive to create international brands, is CI a "dead trend" or can it help companies?
Creating a brand is the fundamental task of CI, so what model will it use in Chinese enterprises to complete this task?
CI was introduced to our country in the 1980s and helped some domestic companies take off in the 1990s. People think it is very mysterious. Here, let’s take a look at what exactly CI is?
The Japanese say CI is a method, the Chinese say CI is a strategy, and I say CI is first and foremost a business strategy. The famous CI three pillar theory of Professor Pard Rand from the United States is: corporate individual image, corporate impression, and corporate identity design to divide the CI system. They represent MI, BI, and VI respectively. For example: in a country, MI is like the country's constitution, which determines the nature of the country; BI is the country's laws, which stipulates the behavioral norms of citizens, and VI is the national flag and national emblem. As far as personal image is concerned, a person's temperament and character are individual images; behavior and cultivation are individual impressions, and hairstyle and attire are individual identification. For business design, in addition to professional performance, the overall image and theatrical characteristics are BI design, professional ethics and public behavior are BI norms, and the appearance packaging is VI communication. In today's changing appearance and packaging, people have higher requirements for the individual image and impression of celebrities? The second generation boss of IBM believes that as an entrepreneur, his positioning is: to have excellent business creed; to be able to be honest and trustworthy Articles; at the same time, you must have the courage to change these creeds at any time. This is his MI and BI design. Similarly, enterprises also need a business strategy: the nature and functions of the enterprise are MI, the corporate code of conduct is BI, and its logo, advertising and other visual communication systems are part of VI. Now, when we talk about CI, it is always associated with enterprises. This is because enterprises need more business strategies. If an enterprise wants to produce products, from raw materials to market, it is not enough to just improve product quality. In today's society with excess commodities, consumers have gradually transitioned from pursuing the value of materiality to focusing on business strategies that improve information. Therefore, CI is also the product of corporate business strategies and communication culture.
With the continuous changes in the world economic landscape, the economic center of gravity continues to shift, from the struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union to the rise of the Japanese economy, to the multipolarization of world powers and the advancement of the global economic integration process, CI The wave has swept across Europe and the United States, swept through Japan, and landed in China? The United States has American CI, Japan has Japanese CI, and China also has its own CI. Each country's CI design has its own characteristics. At different times, CI has experienced rise and fall in these countries, and companies in various countries have different trends.
In Europe, it is the birthplace of CI. The first was the German AEG Electric Company. Then in the 1930s, the British government invited famous designers such as Edward Johnston to design a unified image for the subway transportation system to deepen the impression of citizens.
The United States is the country that truly introduced CI into enterprises and determined its important status. From the 1950s to the 1970s, after World War II, the European economy was in urgent need of recovery, but the United States ushered in an unprecedented good environment for economic development. American sociologists proposed the concept of "post-industrial society" in the late 1950s. The government has realized that industrial society is transforming into an information society where "knowledge is capital". International Business Machines Corporation, referred to as IBM, has always been considered a model for successfully introducing CI in the early stages.
It inspired many advanced companies in the United States to introduce CI, such as Mobile Oil Company, Westinghouse Electric Co., Ltd., etc. In 1970, after the Coca-Cola Company innovated the Coca-Cola logo around the world, the famous 3M Company, major airlines, banks, Chain stores, Chrysler and other famous automobile companies?, many companies have joined the ranks of introducing CI. It is worth noting that the United States knew at that time that in the information society, in terms of the composition of wealth, knowledge would account for an increasing proportion of intangible assets. Take the world-famous Nike company as an example. While many manufacturers are rushing around to sell their products, it does not have a production factory of its own. Manufacturers all produce "Nike" brand products under the authorization of Nike through a license. All the assets of the "Nike" company are the "Nike" brand trademark, as well as marketing capabilities and design and development capabilities. Nike dominates the global sports shoe market by relying on the intangible asset of its brand. This tells us that the integrated symbolic image created by CI can ensure the informatization of product brands; it can ensure that enterprises grasp the overall effect of information output in a macro overview.
Japan began to introduce European and American technology from the Meiji Restoration. The defeated country took off after World War II and became the world's largest exporter of electrical appliances and automobiles. From the 1950s to the 1970s, during the prosperous period of CI in the United States, CI in Japan began to take off. Japan's TDK, Ito Eido, MAZDA and other companies have introduced CI. What they have done is to standardize and standardize the company's logo, so that it can follow a standard in everything from high-rise buildings to business cards and envelopes, and play a role. The role of unifying visual effects. In fact, this is just visual identity system design - VI design. At the same time, this comprehensive standardized operation has unexpectedly improved management efficiency and achieved high returns at low cost. Among them, MAZDA and Daiei Department Store are still considered to be typical cases of success after landing in Japan. This is only the first of the four periods that Japan’s CI design has experienced. Is the fun yet to come? The introduction of the CI concept into its own country shows that Japan has always been good at learning, absorbing and copying the successful experiences of the West.
At that time, China was experiencing constant political movements and did not have a stable social environment centered on economic development. Under the planned economic system of "eating from the same big pot", CI design is regarded as a product of capitalist countries and is ruthlessly excluded from the country.
Around the 1980s, to be exact, the CI boom in the United States cooled down significantly in the late 1970s. The economy in the United States was in recession at the time. Design companies could not have a steady stream of work like Japanese design companies, nor were the demand for design in China still in short supply. In the United States, "initiative" methods such as designing, raising funds, and selling by oneself were even popular. design company. Theoretically, scholar Li Ai Lisi proposed that CI theory is an "inside-out" way of thinking: starting from the perspective of the enterprise, not from the perspective of the consumer. This marketing concept that transforms "sales concept" into "market concept" does not match. "CI inevitably has the limitations of the times." The crisis of IBM in the United States began in the late 1980s, which can be said to be a precursor to the negative effects of the CI strategy. When Americans realize that the CI strategy needs to be sublimated and improved, the Japanese business community no longer hears "Why do we need to engage in CI?" CI, as an effective means of business preparedness, has been understood and accepted by many companies, and has adopted a positive attitude Introduction of CI. The development of CI design in Japan has gone through three periods: "Ginza House", "Koiwai Dairy" and the well-known Kenwood "KENWOOD" are the second successful period; in order to expand the scope of services , the third phase of improving the overall quality of enterprises, represented by "Kirin Beer", "Tokyo Insurance Company", and "Brinston Tire"; in the second half of the 1980s, there were many successful examples of CI, prompting Japan to become more and more More and more companies are thinking about how to explore their business resources by introducing CI. For example, "INAX Ceramics Company" replaces the old image with a new "INAX" name and design, positioning its corporate philosophy as "creating environmental beauty." "It is worth mentioning that Japanese companies are very keen on the characteristics of Western "post-industrial society", and their design styles follow the world trend and turn into "post-modernism" style. Modern designer Robert Venturi has this way of describing the characteristics of post-modern design Descriptive: I like mixed elements rather than purebreds, distortion rather than straight forward, ambiguity rather than clarity, inclusive rather than exclusive.
Moreover, while focusing on corporate philosophy, Japan has very strict requirements on CI design and production methods. The "CI tree" is proof of this. When designing for enterprises, various CI trees are designed to investigate and study the root of the tree. The corporate planning part is the trunk, the "process tree"; the "expansion tree" that expresses the design content, such as the CI tree (picture) of the Japanese telecommunications company NTT that uses the basic image as the root to expand the application design. It can be seen that the Japanese people have a rigorous and serious work attitude. In addition, Japanese companies at that time seized every opportunity to introduce CI, and their tactics were endless, which is worth learning from Chinese companies.
In the 1980s, the spring breeze of reform and opening up swept across China. The national leaders proposed "building socialism with Chinese characteristics" with economic construction as the center and material civilization and spiritual civilization as the basic points. The socialist market economic system has been initially established. The extent to which the successive political and economic policies have brought about changes in people's lives can be seen from the changes in Chinese people's values. Especially in coastal cities and special economic zones that developed first, more and more people are accepting "foreign brands" and "foreign culture." Times no longer allow us to boycott foreign goods. Japanese electrical appliances and American daily necessities occupy a place in many families. Subsequently, CI design also had a vague understanding in the minds of Chinese people. "Why is the 'McDonald's' logo so eye-catching?" "Why is the name 'Coca-Cola' so nice?" But after all, China is a large country with a vast territory and a large population. At the beginning of the initial stage of the development of the socialist market economy, there are still most "Those who have not become rich." When developed capitalist countries entered the information society, China had not yet solved the problem of food and clothing. At this time, designers constantly warned entrepreneurs whose minds were still in the agricultural civilization and subsistence stage, hoping that they would consider the issue of shaping corporate image and brand image as an input-output. In fact, there were not many advertising and design companies in China at that time, and there were no professional companies that could control CI.
Although CI has declined in the United States in the 1990s, other business strategies based on it have continued to enrich and strengthen it. American CI design focuses on the dissemination of the VI part. It does not pay attention to cultivating corporate philosophy and developing business strategies. As mentioned earlier, it lacks marketing ideas. As a result, Western developed countries developed CS, that is, customer satisfaction strategy. In 1986, a market research company in the United States published the first ranking of customer satisfaction with cars based on CS theory. As a business strategy that is in line with the demand trend of the times, it makes up for the shortcomings of CI that overemphasize the company's own image, making the CI strategy move away from being enterprise-centered to being consumer-centered, and continue to exert its functional effects.
Just when the CI of the United States was being sublimated, Japan encountered another problem. Japanese CI emphasizes corporate culture as the leading factor, emphasizing the two parts of CI: concept identification (MI) and behavior identification (CBI). Because of its wide coverage and difficulty in implementation, there are not many people who can properly operate MI and BI together. In addition, many scholars have paid attention to "CI pollution" - the visual flooding caused by various advertisements has a negative impact on society. negative effects. It is also believed that CI is a product of the bubble economy. So, how can it improve itself?
Regardless of whether CI is a product of the bubble economy, the craze of CI has swept across the land of China. In the 1990s, with the deepening of reform and opening up in our country, the socialist market economic system was further established. Coastal economically developed areas led to other developments. More and more people became rich. The living standards in some big cities reached the level of moderately developed capitalist countries. level. As long as the clothes can keep you warm, as long as the food can satisfy your hunger, as long as the watch can keep accurate time, and as long as the refrigerator can cool down, isn't it great to be "cheap and good"? This kind of value concept without structure and spiritual connotation is difficult to be accepted by the market with the advent of commodity diversification. People's value concept has changed again, which heralds the arrival of the information age in China, and people's thirst for knowledge and culture has arrived. .
This is the condition for the rise of CI design in China. Chinese companies have begun to realize that in addition to solving their own survival value, they must also realize social value. The pursuit of information value will enable companies to better solve their survival value. China's economic construction is market-oriented. As long as it is conducive to market development, there is no need to investigate whether it is a "capital" or a "social" company. When a company gets a taste of the news, it can promote a company, and the media can also destroy a company overnight. The ups and downs of business. Therefore, attention has been paid to corporate packaging.
Mainland my country was most directly influenced by Taiwan's CI design in the 1990s. Taiwan's design style was influenced by Japan, but it was not as good as Japan's in keeping up with the world trend and entering the post-modern style. It operates in mainland China and has designed designs for "Binbin Suit", "Jialing Motorcycle", etc. Chinese designers have accepted Japanese postmodernism consciously or unconsciously, which can be seen from the design of corporate logos at that time. Such as Helios, Hemisphere Electrical Appliances, single husband high-end shirts, Langqi, etc. At this time, CI in China was still in its infancy, and together with the rapid economic development at that time, it spread throughout the country. Many advertising companies and design companies use the banner of CI design, and the planning fees for CI are kept very low. Some practitioners claim to be able to provide overall CI planning services without even seeing the CI manual. In this dizzying and swollen world, I firmly believe that "Jiang Taigong fishes, and those who wish to take the bait". dolcn.com
Looking to the future, there is a difference between the self-design approach popular in the superpower country of the United States, Japanese design companies that can at least have enough food, and Chinese design companies whose supply exceeds demand. In the long run, A period of time that no one can match.
The stumbling blocks in the Japanese design world are gradually being eliminated: designers headed by Nakanishi Moto have added business philosophy and economic planning based on the original CI in the United States, and will also use this theoretical system Feedback to the United States. Japan's behavior in terms of MI is obvious to all. For example, the Japanese leaders of Guilin Smile Hall summon employees to shout slogans every morning to strengthen the corporate spirit. In terms of BI, we develop a mechanism for enterprises to stimulate corporate vitality. For example, Honda proposes an award-winning plan for rationalization construction by employees. And establish reward and punishment mechanisms in terms of hospitality attitude, sales services, etc. In terms of VI, we advocate "personalized" design and attach importance to investigation first. For example, "Matsuya Department Store" came back to life after repositioning its unified image! Therefore, while improving the company's own quality and developing marketing strategies, it is the guarantee for the future development of Japanese CI.
There are basically no successful examples of CI design in China. Does it mean that China is not suitable for CI at present? Why was CI always talked about in China in the 1990s? CI design became the most fashionable thing in China at that time. I heard that a "Sun God" logo in Guangzhou alone was worth hundreds of millions, so everyone wanted to engage in CI. But CI is a "flash in the pan" among Chinese companies? From a political perspective, Chinese companies have just entered the market, and many companies have not even solved the most basic "enterprise issues". It is still too early to talk about CI. Domestic representative experts also put forward this view. The requirements of our country's enterprises are survival and development. What needs to be solved urgently is not to introduce CI, but to establish a modern enterprise system, strengthen the construction of corporate culture, and improve the overall quality of enterprise employees. From an economic point of view, China's economy is developing rapidly. However, due to its basic national conditions, it is currently unable to keep pace with Western developed capitalism, and its market economic system still needs to be improved.