Abstract
The purpose of this study is to link the Yi tribe's traditional patterns to bag design. Yi tribe is a minor ethic group in China, whose traditional pattern has a high artistic value in that its shapes are diverse and each one has peculiar elegance. Traditional patterns are also indicative of spiritual dept or symbolic stories, rather than being indicative of simple formative beauty. Thus, reorganizing these patterns and applying them artistically to design- in terms of resource utilization- would be significant. Out of all of the Yi tribe's traditional patterns, the cherry blossom_(马樱花), water wave_(水波), sky father and earth mother_(天父地母), pomegranate blossom, triangle, sheep' horn, wisteria vine_(藤条), square and diaper_(四角菱形) and the zigzag_(曲折) patterns were chosen for use during the development of a bag design. This study is based upon document study, including research papers and internet web sites, the point of which was to investigate the form of the traditional patterns, and the creative design process. The design procedure includes these sub-processes: selection, arrangement and color-scheme. In the selection process, the form of the pattern was edited using Adobe Photoshop. The pattern was freely arranged to reflect various emotions. In terms of the color-scheme of the patterns, the colors used by Henri Matisse(1869-1954) in his work were selected and adapted when dyeing the patterns. Subsequently, the final design resulting from these design development processes was applied to the actual production of the bag by using canvas fabric and leather, after which the bag image was proposed using computer simulation. In conclusion, six bag designs were created using traditional patterns from the Yi tribe. Through the processes explained above, this study confirmed that traditional patterns could be widely applied as design motifs and that more sophisticated, modern, and creative designs could be developed based on traditional patterns.