# Research on VI Design of Corporate Image Based on Computer Multimedia Technology

Authors: Shizhuo Zhang
Journal: Scientific Programming
 (2022)

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## Abstract

Core concepts such as corporate culture and management structure are displayed through VI (visual identity) visual design. The key effects of VI visual design include the image design of the entire enterprise and the image design of the main brand of the enterprise. In addition, the overall brand of a business will also be affected. VI visual design also plays an important role in the entire brand promotion. Through VI visual design, you can quickly understand and analyze an enterprise. The development of the Internet has changed people’s living habits and consumption patterns. In order to meet people’s consumption needs, more and more Internet companies have become the mainstream of the industry. Different from the VI image of traditional enterprises, the brand image of the Internet has huge differences in design methods, expression methods, and communication channels. This article objectively analyzes the brand characteristics of current Internet companies, as well as the consumer psychology and needs of consumers in the “Internet +” era, so as to illustrate the importance of the same complete brand image for companies. Next, we will analyze the problems existing in the traditional VI image in the Internet era and design a set of overall Internet brand image design methods. Finally, combined with social development and social hotspots, predictions are made about the changes in brand image design.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

### 1.1. Research Background

The “Internet +” plan swept the world and spread to China in the 1990s after the birth of the Internet in the late 1960s. In 2012, the concept of Internet + appeared for the first time at the Fifth Mobile Internet Expo [1–3]. Subsequently, with the continuous improvement and construction of Internet facilities and the continuous popularization of digital strategies, Internet services have changed the business ecology of various industries and promoted breakthroughs and innovations in traditional corporate brand strategies [4]. The “Internet +” plan means that the combination of the Internet and traditional industries is a new economic form, and the Internet has become the internal engine driving China’s economic transformation and upgrading [5]. Traditional industries rely on the advantages of network technology to deeply integrate with the Internet and complete economic transformation and upgrading by optimizing production factors, updating business systems, and rebuilding business models, thereby driving economic productivity to achieve wealth superposition [6]. The understanding of the “Internet +” plan can be divided into two levels. First, the symbol “+” of “Internet +” means adding union, which is mainly used in the Internet and other traditional industries, and is carried out through the deep integration of the Internet and traditional industries. Second, the deep meaning of “Internet +” as a whole concept is that traditional industries complete industrial upgrading through Internetization [7]. Today, “Internet +” has already penetrated into various industries and has driven a huge change in business forms, inspiring the birth of new industries. From cross-border e-commerce, O2O (online to offline) life platform to OTA (online travel agency) travel website, etc., Internet technology promotes the business transformation of the industry, leading us to successfully open the Internet + era, and it penetrates into all areas of our daily life. Under the impact of the Internet, traditional brands have exposed many disadvantages in their brand strategy, showing an unprecedented embarrassing situation in the traditional era. Many traditional industry brands follow the old-fashioned way. Even if they had excellent brand concepts in the early stage, they did not carry out continuous brand building and did not take the express train of “Internet +” plan to innovate, thus missing the opportunity to fully dialogue with consumers.Under the impact of the “Internet +” wave, traditional brands should take “innovative interpretation of traditional brands” as an important goal of enterprise development. How to keep the previous advantages and historical accumulation while learning from successful corporate brand building, and how to adapt to the changes in the Internet environment and new media marketing is an important issue for the continued survival and development of traditional corporate brands [8]. As a traditional industry brand, it is far from enough to simply use the Internet as a tool. The Internet relies on traffic to bring the eyeball economy, and the attention of the broad audience is converted into traffic, and then, the traffic is realized. Therefore, the focus of Internet-based brand business models in traditional industries is to attract consumers’ attention, understand their needs, and integrate brands into their lives. Various trends of thought brought by “Internet +” have fully baptized traditional thinking, and enterprises and consumers have begun to pay attention to the fashionable pursuit and personalized expression of life. As a new engine driving the upgrading of China’s economic market, “Internet +” has stimulated the rise of a new business situation and led the development of a new mode of cultural and entertainment consumption. Through the image of the QQ penguin, Tencent seeks a breakthrough in the efficiency of brand communication and strives to build its own brand ecosystem to win the love and recognition of consumers. Some Internet companies have even been cartoonized. Tencent, NetEase, and UC are also known as “Goose Factory,” “Pig Farm,” and “Squirrel Factory.” Their success has also attracted many traditional offline corporate brands such as Haier and Midea to follow suit and successfully transform online.


### 1.2. Research Motivation

The growth of Internet companies in a short period of time has brought substantial problems to the survival of various companies. Consumer groups and overall consumption levels will not change significantly in a short period of time. One of the most important problems to be solved is how to quickly and deeply retain the brand in the impression of consumers. By analyzing the development history of companies that have successfully established Internet brands at home and abroad, such as Tencent, JD.com, Line Friends, and other brands, it is found that creating an effective brand image is an important method to attract a large number of consumers. For most small and medium-sized Internet companies, the understanding of the concept of brand image is still stuck on “designing a logo and a cartoon image” but just moved the display space from the paper to the electronic screen. Such a brand image simply cannot meet consumers’ criteria for judging a brand, and the probability of consumers choosing this brand will be greatly reduced.Brand image is a collection of corporate culture, corporate connotation, and corporate attributes. A successful brand image can accurately convey the characteristics of the enterprise and even the highlights of the product to consumers. From the beginning of the establishment of the enterprise to the marketing in the future, the brand image is a highly functional visual expression because the first thing consumers notice is the visual experience. Brand image is the integration of invisible and complex marketing concepts into visual performance, giving consumers an initial feeling of the brand, and further stimulating consumers’ favorability to the brand.Therefore, Internet companies must understand what a real brand image is and what characteristics a brand image needs. Enterprises further need to understand what kind of brand image they need to create in order to attract a large number of consumers, and what kind of design methods can they create a successful brand image. From the designer’s point of view, it is necessary to analyze the current Internet environment and change the design method according to the development of design trends, which is necessary for the creation of the brand image of Internet companies. The successful promotion of the brand image can further promote the survival and development of the enterprise.


## 1.1. Research Background

The “Internet +” plan swept the world and spread to China in the 1990s after the birth of the Internet in the late 1960s. In 2012, the concept of Internet + appeared for the first time at the Fifth Mobile Internet Expo [1–3]. Subsequently, with the continuous improvement and construction of Internet facilities and the continuous popularization of digital strategies, Internet services have changed the business ecology of various industries and promoted breakthroughs and innovations in traditional corporate brand strategies [4]. The “Internet +” plan means that the combination of the Internet and traditional industries is a new economic form, and the Internet has become the internal engine driving China’s economic transformation and upgrading [5]. Traditional industries rely on the advantages of network technology to deeply integrate with the Internet and complete economic transformation and upgrading by optimizing production factors, updating business systems, and rebuilding business models, thereby driving economic productivity to achieve wealth superposition [6]. The understanding of the “Internet +” plan can be divided into two levels. First, the symbol “+” of “Internet +” means adding union, which is mainly used in the Internet and other traditional industries, and is carried out through the deep integration of the Internet and traditional industries. Second, the deep meaning of “Internet +” as a whole concept is that traditional industries complete industrial upgrading through Internetization [7]. Today, “Internet +” has already penetrated into various industries and has driven a huge change in business forms, inspiring the birth of new industries. From cross-border e-commerce, O2O (online to offline) life platform to OTA (online travel agency) travel website, etc., Internet technology promotes the business transformation of the industry, leading us to successfully open the Internet + era, and it penetrates into all areas of our daily life. Under the impact of the Internet, traditional brands have exposed many disadvantages in their brand strategy, showing an unprecedented embarrassing situation in the traditional era. Many traditional industry brands follow the old-fashioned way. Even if they had excellent brand concepts in the early stage, they did not carry out continuous brand building and did not take the express train of “Internet +” plan to innovate, thus missing the opportunity to fully dialogue with consumers.Under the impact of the “Internet +” wave, traditional brands should take “innovative interpretation of traditional brands” as an important goal of enterprise development. How to keep the previous advantages and historical accumulation while learning from successful corporate brand building, and how to adapt to the changes in the Internet environment and new media marketing is an important issue for the continued survival and development of traditional corporate brands [8]. As a traditional industry brand, it is far from enough to simply use the Internet as a tool. The Internet relies on traffic to bring the eyeball economy, and the attention of the broad audience is converted into traffic, and then, the traffic is realized. Therefore, the focus of Internet-based brand business models in traditional industries is to attract consumers’ attention, understand their needs, and integrate brands into their lives. Various trends of thought brought by “Internet +” have fully baptized traditional thinking, and enterprises and consumers have begun to pay attention to the fashionable pursuit and personalized expression of life. As a new engine driving the upgrading of China’s economic market, “Internet +” has stimulated the rise of a new business situation and led the development of a new mode of cultural and entertainment consumption. Through the image of the QQ penguin, Tencent seeks a breakthrough in the efficiency of brand communication and strives to build its own brand ecosystem to win the love and recognition of consumers. Some Internet companies have even been cartoonized. Tencent, NetEase, and UC are also known as “Goose Factory,” “Pig Farm,” and “Squirrel Factory.” Their success has also attracted many traditional offline corporate brands such as Haier and Midea to follow suit and successfully transform online.


## 1.2. Research Motivation

The growth of Internet companies in a short period of time has brought substantial problems to the survival of various companies. Consumer groups and overall consumption levels will not change significantly in a short period of time. One of the most important problems to be solved is how to quickly and deeply retain the brand in the impression of consumers. By analyzing the development history of companies that have successfully established Internet brands at home and abroad, such as Tencent, JD.com, Line Friends, and other brands, it is found that creating an effective brand image is an important method to attract a large number of consumers. For most small and medium-sized Internet companies, the understanding of the concept of brand image is still stuck on “designing a logo and a cartoon image” but just moved the display space from the paper to the electronic screen. Such a brand image simply cannot meet consumers’ criteria for judging a brand, and the probability of consumers choosing this brand will be greatly reduced.Brand image is a collection of corporate culture, corporate connotation, and corporate attributes. A successful brand image can accurately convey the characteristics of the enterprise and even the highlights of the product to consumers. From the beginning of the establishment of the enterprise to the marketing in the future, the brand image is a highly functional visual expression because the first thing consumers notice is the visual experience. Brand image is the integration of invisible and complex marketing concepts into visual performance, giving consumers an initial feeling of the brand, and further stimulating consumers’ favorability to the brand.Therefore, Internet companies must understand what a real brand image is and what characteristics a brand image needs. Enterprises further need to understand what kind of brand image they need to create in order to attract a large number of consumers, and what kind of design methods can they create a successful brand image. From the designer’s point of view, it is necessary to analyze the current Internet environment and change the design method according to the development of design trends, which is necessary for the creation of the brand image of Internet companies. The successful promotion of the brand image can further promote the survival and development of the enterprise.


## 2. Related Work

The concept of the brand first originated from western developed countries. Advanced production technology and mature economic system have laid a good environmental foundation for the theoretical research of brand image design abroad [9]. The classic foreign cartoon images first influenced the “cartoon generation” teenagers after the 1970s. They are regarded as a generation that has grown up with cartoon fashion culture, and the concept of commercial cartoon images was officially proposed in the 1970s. At that time, developed countries such as the United States and Japan took the lead in using brand cartoon images to carry out extensive commercial operations. American companies have been highly praised after importing cartoon images into CIS. Among them, the classic cartoon characters such as “Bibendum,” “Michelin tire man,” “Uncle McDonald,” and “Mickey Mouse” have a history of over a hundred years. These brand cartoons have been successfully derived into a collective cultural industry integrating related entertainment, art, culture and media, and so far, their brand has blossomed with wireless vitality and created huge business opportunities. Gail Tom compared the differences in personality and endorsement applicability between stars and virtual cartoon images in [10] and puts forward concepts such as “cartoon virtual spokesperson” and “animation character spokesperson.” The author concludes in the literature [10] that virtual cartoon spokespersons are more relevant to products, more persistent, and more able to generate brand associations through virtuality than celebrity endorsers. Celebrities have an advantage in attracting attention, and virtual is more effective in differentiation and character building. Compared with celebrity spokespersons, virtual spokespersons have five major advantages, including plasticity, controllability, sustainability, correspondence, and economy. Some scholars [11] believe that innovative virtual spokespersons are different from the past, and it is necessary to increase their exposure to solve the phenomenon of weak awareness. Literature [12] analyzed the impact of brand mascots on brand awareness and persuasion and their role in enhancing brand bias. Some scholars [13] believe that in order to create brand value, brand cartoons must have consumers’ sense of identity and happiness and determine what type of psychological brand cartoon images are more popular.Compared with other countries, China’s research on corporate brand image design is relatively late, but the arrival of the “Internet +” era has vigorously promoted the theoretical research and design practice of brand image design by domestic designers. At the same time, with the globalization of knowledge and information, Chinese designers have more convenient access to international advanced design theories and appreciate excellent design works, so as to design more excellent brand images. Many Chinese scholars have analyzed the impact of brands on consumers and the series of effects brought about by brand image design, showing readers and researchers the specific combination of theory and practice, and promoting the development of the design market’s advantages [14].Generally speaking, VI design is a visual recognition system that can shock people’s vision and has strong communication and appeal. The process is to convert the nonvisual parts of the enterprise into visual images [15]. VI design includes the design of basic elements and application parts. The basic elements include the design of the corporate logo and its standard colors, standard characters, auxiliary graphics, graphics with corporate symbolic meaning, and the design of standard combined graphics. The design of the application part is to set the application standards for different regional environments such as enterprise guidance systems, materials, and publicity posters.The corporate brand image mainly includes the company’s core vision, cultural development, development planning, personnel quality, and practice standards, of which the more important is a positive and good corporate culture. According to statistical analysis, visual information covers about 83% of all sensory information in the human brain. Good design can help companies stand out from the huge market, so the VI visual design of the company becomes very important.However, in the Internet era, there are many defects in the traditional VI visual image design.The first is the problem of the VI visual system itself; that is, there are too many corporate brands for the image of the image. They did not delve into the inherent characteristics of the VI image but simply made a few posters. This VI visual design method has no concept and foundation and will only follow the trend.The second is that VI design pursues too much visual image. On the basis of complicated information, some companies pursue visual stimulation too much, and by thinking that as long as they are gorgeous enough, they can attract a large number of young people. This method can indeed attract a lot of attention in a short period of time, but excessive beautification and complicated decoration are soulless and cannot achieve the image expression of the brand itself.Finally, the image expansion design in the later stage of the enterprise did not adhere to the characteristics of the original VI visual image. The excessive interpretation of information update speed by enterprises is the cause of this problem. The frequent updating of image construction by enterprises will make consumers quickly forget their previous successful image, thus losing consumers.


## 3. Internet-Based Brand Image Design Research

### 3.1. Design Semiotics

The brand cartoon image is a cartoon image designed by the enterprise on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of the development factors such as the background of the times, the competitive market, the competitors, and the target group, which conforms to the brand positioning, product concept, and cultural connotation. The prototype of its image can be a person, an animal, a plant, or an anthropomorphic inanimate object.Brand cartoon image design is an important member of corporate CI (corporate visual identity system) and was originally called brand mascot or brand virtual spokesperson. As the virtual salesman of the brand, the primary responsibility of the brand cartoon image is to promote its own corporate brand. With the gradual development of the domestic market and the country’s attention to the animation industry, more and more companies will use cartoon images as their brand ambassadors in the future. Design semiotics is the applied research of semiotics in visual communication design, industrial design, environmental design, and other design fields. Many modeling elements that constitute the brand’s cartoon image design, such as body proportions, movement forms, colors, and expressions of facial features, can be used as nonverbal image symbols to convey various information. This kind of image symbol belongs to the symbolic symbol. The brand cartoon image is actually a medium used by enterprises for self-promotion, group communication, and information exchange and is a symbol. Brand cartoon images have specific symbolic value and can fulfill the mission of expressing complete symbolic meaning. Therefore, if you want to understand the meaning behind the brand cartoon design, and how to use the knowledge of semiotics to design and convey design works that form friendly communication with the audience, you need to study the design semiotics behind it.Design symbol is a symbol or symbol system attached to a design work, and its carrier is a specific design work. Design symbols belong to the secondary discipline of semiotics. The form of the original symbol (source) attached to the work is the “signifier,” and the function and meaning of this form are the “signified.” The ternary structure of the design symbol is shown in Figure1. The information dissemination model of design symbols is established according to the dissemination mode of information in the information discipline, and there are two keywords: source and sink. The source (source) is the producer where the information originates, the sink (sink) is the consumer where the information arrives, and the channel between the source and the information sink is called a channel. In the information dissemination model, the source of information is the original symbol, which mainly refers to the brand culture and concept symbols to be conveyed by the information producer enterprise. The design process after screening and editing is called the coding process. The brand-new symbol is attached to the original symbol, and the implied information is transmitted to the destination after encoding so that the information transmission of the original symbol can find its destination. The specific information dissemination model is shown in Figure 2. The design symbols received by the audience will become new symbols, and the high-quality new symbol patterns will be loaded into the full original symbol library for future designers to use for reference.Figure 1
Three parts of design symbol.Figure 2
Information propagation model of source and sink.Therefore, the design symbol is a new symbol derived from the original symbol, which belongs to the ternary symbol. This new symbol will be understood by users and audiences for its intent and meaning, a process called decoding (interpreting the message). If the new design symbol is widely used and well-received, the audience will regard it as a consensus cultural symbol, and it will become the design material of other design works and be put into the resource library of the original symbol.


### 3.2. Brand Cartoon Image Design Prototype

The brand cartoon image is the totem of a brand. It expresses the abstract concept through the visual symbol language, conveys the intangible enterprise spirit, and makes people feel the powerful and rich brand connotation. According to the archetype theory, Western film workers and brand experts divide the popular film archetypes into 12 types: hero, king, lover, magician, explorer, wise man, caregiver, and creator. Popular movies and brands are backed by the power of prototypes, and the creation of brand cartoon images also follows the principle of prototypes. Most of the brand cartoons are made of characters, animals, plants, or virtual images that create vitality to endorse the corporate image or products. To a large extent, the design ideas of brand cartoon images are most intuitively conveyed on the basis of prototype materials. According to the statistics of hundreds of industry brand cases, the proportion of cartoon image design prototypes in the Internet industry, especially the Internet trading platform, is as high as 90%, while in traditional industries such as food, clothing, and electrical appliances, the cartoon image design prototypes are mostly characters, followed by animals. Avatars of prototypes also occupy some markets.Today, designers want to design a brand cartoon image that meets the standards of social enterprises, and they need to meet the different demands of demanders by judging the characteristics of corporate activities and cultural market environment on the theme of design prototypes. Often, the demand side pays attention not only to the simple popularity and aesthetics in the commercial promotion under review but also to the demands of showing the brand personality to consumers and distinguishing between homogeneous competitors.Scholars in the history of Western aesthetics believe that when designing cartoon images, by changing a certain proportional relationship of the shape, artistic effects such as humorous exaggeration, cuteness, and cuteness can be easily achieved. The subtle changes in the design of the proportions of the shapes infuse the cartoon characters with different characters and vivid images. Before the Internet era, the traditional commercial cartoon image modeling style was almost changed with the development of the animation industry. Especially in the first half of the 20th century, American Hollywood cartoons dominated the global animation market. Most of the cartoon characters were exaggerated and cartoonized on the basis of the proportion of real characters. The advent of the Internet era has positively affected the development of animation and cartoon image design after the 1960s. United Productions of America redesigned the animated characters with bold proportions and controlled the proportions of the characters’ head to the body between 1 : 1 and 1 : 3. Izzy, the cartoon character of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, is the first cartoon character designed by a computer in the history of the Olympic Games, has a design ratio of 1 : 1, with big eyes occupying almost 1/4 of the whole image, looking funny and enthusiastic, as shown in Figure3. In the 1980s, Internet technology has been facing the world, and Japan, where animation technology is developed, has created a brand-new Q-version design.Figure 3
Illustration of Izzy.


### 3.3. Brand Cartoon Image Color Selection and Collocation

Scientific experiments have proved that in the first 20 seconds of observing an animal, the human visual perception consists of 80% of color and 20% of shape. After 2 minutes, the color is 60%, and the shape is 40%. After 5 minutes, both are 50% each, and this state will continue. The impression of color is extremely important, especially for impulsive and passionate consumer groups. The successful color selection and matching of brand cartoon images can fully stimulate their emotions and consumption desires. As an information dissemination factor, color is more important than other components such as shape, line, and medium. In theory, any color can be successfully matched in a suitable way, and the color ratio is the key.Under normal circumstances, the color selection and collocation should be concise, rather less than more. For a variety of colors, the primary and secondary relationships should be distinguished, and elements such as collocation and harmony should be considered. The use of large and small areas of color will form the overall cool and warm visual perception of the brand cartoon image, giving people the most intuitive initial image and forming different brand tonal cognitions.The basic colors of the cartoon image of the Internet and traditional brands are relatively heavy. In terms of the number of colors used, the Internet generally selects 3 to 4 colors for design, while the traditional brands have a wide range of color choices, mostly more than 4 to 5. In terms of color temperature control, both are happy to use warm tones as basic design colors. In contrast, cartoon images in the traditional food industry prefer to show warm colors, and Internet brands choose 10% more cool colors than traditional brands. Table1 compares the number of color usage of cartoon images of Internet and traditional industry brands.Table 1
Color usage comparison of Internet and traditional industry cartoons brand image.
Color usage2 types (%)3 types (%)4 types (%)5 types (%)More than 5 (%)Internet industry737.6742.031033Traditional industry1118.9531.7713.8224.46Black and white are the basic colors that the Internet is best at using, followed by red and yellow warm colors. For example, JD’s Joy and Tmall’s Black Cat are skilled in using black, white, and gray, while Suning Lion and Amazon Corgi use orange that matches the logo color. Coupled with the diversification of Internet communication channels, the flexible conversion of 2D to 3D technology, and the rapid updating and upgrading of Internet images, the simple color matching has given more possibilities and inclusiveness to the later design and communication of cartoon images. The utilization rate of cool colors in the Internet industry is nearly 10% higher than that in the traditional industry, mainly due to the promotion of fresh food, tourism, group buying, and other services in recent years, and their brand attributes are mostly calm, free, and fresh, as shown in Table2.Table 2
Color cold/warm relationship comparison of Internet and traditional industry cartoons.
Color temperature usageWarm tones (%)Cool tones (%)Cool and warm (%)Black and white (%)Neutral (%)Internet industry46.6719.0313.3315.6753Traditional industry60.659.710.7313.8251In general, the color selection of most cartoon images strives to be bright and bright, which directly catches the eye.


## 3.1. Design Semiotics

The brand cartoon image is a cartoon image designed by the enterprise on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of the development factors such as the background of the times, the competitive market, the competitors, and the target group, which conforms to the brand positioning, product concept, and cultural connotation. The prototype of its image can be a person, an animal, a plant, or an anthropomorphic inanimate object.Brand cartoon image design is an important member of corporate CI (corporate visual identity system) and was originally called brand mascot or brand virtual spokesperson. As the virtual salesman of the brand, the primary responsibility of the brand cartoon image is to promote its own corporate brand. With the gradual development of the domestic market and the country’s attention to the animation industry, more and more companies will use cartoon images as their brand ambassadors in the future. Design semiotics is the applied research of semiotics in visual communication design, industrial design, environmental design, and other design fields. Many modeling elements that constitute the brand’s cartoon image design, such as body proportions, movement forms, colors, and expressions of facial features, can be used as nonverbal image symbols to convey various information. This kind of image symbol belongs to the symbolic symbol. The brand cartoon image is actually a medium used by enterprises for self-promotion, group communication, and information exchange and is a symbol. Brand cartoon images have specific symbolic value and can fulfill the mission of expressing complete symbolic meaning. Therefore, if you want to understand the meaning behind the brand cartoon design, and how to use the knowledge of semiotics to design and convey design works that form friendly communication with the audience, you need to study the design semiotics behind it.Design symbol is a symbol or symbol system attached to a design work, and its carrier is a specific design work. Design symbols belong to the secondary discipline of semiotics. The form of the original symbol (source) attached to the work is the “signifier,” and the function and meaning of this form are the “signified.” The ternary structure of the design symbol is shown in Figure1. The information dissemination model of design symbols is established according to the dissemination mode of information in the information discipline, and there are two keywords: source and sink. The source (source) is the producer where the information originates, the sink (sink) is the consumer where the information arrives, and the channel between the source and the information sink is called a channel. In the information dissemination model, the source of information is the original symbol, which mainly refers to the brand culture and concept symbols to be conveyed by the information producer enterprise. The design process after screening and editing is called the coding process. The brand-new symbol is attached to the original symbol, and the implied information is transmitted to the destination after encoding so that the information transmission of the original symbol can find its destination. The specific information dissemination model is shown in Figure 2. The design symbols received by the audience will become new symbols, and the high-quality new symbol patterns will be loaded into the full original symbol library for future designers to use for reference.Figure 1
Three parts of design symbol.Figure 2
Information propagation model of source and sink.Therefore, the design symbol is a new symbol derived from the original symbol, which belongs to the ternary symbol. This new symbol will be understood by users and audiences for its intent and meaning, a process called decoding (interpreting the message). If the new design symbol is widely used and well-received, the audience will regard it as a consensus cultural symbol, and it will become the design material of other design works and be put into the resource library of the original symbol.


## 3.2. Brand Cartoon Image Design Prototype

The brand cartoon image is the totem of a brand. It expresses the abstract concept through the visual symbol language, conveys the intangible enterprise spirit, and makes people feel the powerful and rich brand connotation. According to the archetype theory, Western film workers and brand experts divide the popular film archetypes into 12 types: hero, king, lover, magician, explorer, wise man, caregiver, and creator. Popular movies and brands are backed by the power of prototypes, and the creation of brand cartoon images also follows the principle of prototypes. Most of the brand cartoons are made of characters, animals, plants, or virtual images that create vitality to endorse the corporate image or products. To a large extent, the design ideas of brand cartoon images are most intuitively conveyed on the basis of prototype materials. According to the statistics of hundreds of industry brand cases, the proportion of cartoon image design prototypes in the Internet industry, especially the Internet trading platform, is as high as 90%, while in traditional industries such as food, clothing, and electrical appliances, the cartoon image design prototypes are mostly characters, followed by animals. Avatars of prototypes also occupy some markets.Today, designers want to design a brand cartoon image that meets the standards of social enterprises, and they need to meet the different demands of demanders by judging the characteristics of corporate activities and cultural market environment on the theme of design prototypes. Often, the demand side pays attention not only to the simple popularity and aesthetics in the commercial promotion under review but also to the demands of showing the brand personality to consumers and distinguishing between homogeneous competitors.Scholars in the history of Western aesthetics believe that when designing cartoon images, by changing a certain proportional relationship of the shape, artistic effects such as humorous exaggeration, cuteness, and cuteness can be easily achieved. The subtle changes in the design of the proportions of the shapes infuse the cartoon characters with different characters and vivid images. Before the Internet era, the traditional commercial cartoon image modeling style was almost changed with the development of the animation industry. Especially in the first half of the 20th century, American Hollywood cartoons dominated the global animation market. Most of the cartoon characters were exaggerated and cartoonized on the basis of the proportion of real characters. The advent of the Internet era has positively affected the development of animation and cartoon image design after the 1960s. United Productions of America redesigned the animated characters with bold proportions and controlled the proportions of the characters’ head to the body between 1 : 1 and 1 : 3. Izzy, the cartoon character of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, is the first cartoon character designed by a computer in the history of the Olympic Games, has a design ratio of 1 : 1, with big eyes occupying almost 1/4 of the whole image, looking funny and enthusiastic, as shown in Figure3. In the 1980s, Internet technology has been facing the world, and Japan, where animation technology is developed, has created a brand-new Q-version design.Figure 3
Illustration of Izzy.


## 3.3. Brand Cartoon Image Color Selection and Collocation

Scientific experiments have proved that in the first 20 seconds of observing an animal, the human visual perception consists of 80% of color and 20% of shape. After 2 minutes, the color is 60%, and the shape is 40%. After 5 minutes, both are 50% each, and this state will continue. The impression of color is extremely important, especially for impulsive and passionate consumer groups. The successful color selection and matching of brand cartoon images can fully stimulate their emotions and consumption desires. As an information dissemination factor, color is more important than other components such as shape, line, and medium. In theory, any color can be successfully matched in a suitable way, and the color ratio is the key.Under normal circumstances, the color selection and collocation should be concise, rather less than more. For a variety of colors, the primary and secondary relationships should be distinguished, and elements such as collocation and harmony should be considered. The use of large and small areas of color will form the overall cool and warm visual perception of the brand cartoon image, giving people the most intuitive initial image and forming different brand tonal cognitions.The basic colors of the cartoon image of the Internet and traditional brands are relatively heavy. In terms of the number of colors used, the Internet generally selects 3 to 4 colors for design, while the traditional brands have a wide range of color choices, mostly more than 4 to 5. In terms of color temperature control, both are happy to use warm tones as basic design colors. In contrast, cartoon images in the traditional food industry prefer to show warm colors, and Internet brands choose 10% more cool colors than traditional brands. Table1 compares the number of color usage of cartoon images of Internet and traditional industry brands.Table 1
Color usage comparison of Internet and traditional industry cartoons brand image.
Color usage2 types (%)3 types (%)4 types (%)5 types (%)More than 5 (%)Internet industry737.6742.031033Traditional industry1118.9531.7713.8224.46Black and white are the basic colors that the Internet is best at using, followed by red and yellow warm colors. For example, JD’s Joy and Tmall’s Black Cat are skilled in using black, white, and gray, while Suning Lion and Amazon Corgi use orange that matches the logo color. Coupled with the diversification of Internet communication channels, the flexible conversion of 2D to 3D technology, and the rapid updating and upgrading of Internet images, the simple color matching has given more possibilities and inclusiveness to the later design and communication of cartoon images. The utilization rate of cool colors in the Internet industry is nearly 10% higher than that in the traditional industry, mainly due to the promotion of fresh food, tourism, group buying, and other services in recent years, and their brand attributes are mostly calm, free, and fresh, as shown in Table2.Table 2
Color cold/warm relationship comparison of Internet and traditional industry cartoons.
Color temperature usageWarm tones (%)Cool tones (%)Cool and warm (%)Black and white (%)Neutral (%)Internet industry46.6719.0313.3315.6753Traditional industry60.659.710.7313.8251In general, the color selection of most cartoon images strives to be bright and bright, which directly catches the eye.


## 4. The Specific Application of VI Design in Corporate Brand Image

### 4.1. Application in Corporate Logo Design

Generally speaking, the top priority in VI design is the inspiration and design of the logo, also called Logo design, which is the visual embodiment of a brand. Logo design is unique and innovative. Its form includes text logo, image logo, and logo combined with image and text. It is a generalization of the overall spirit and material content of the enterprise and is also the core part of the entire VI design. Therefore, brand designers should understand and analyze the spiritual culture and material basis of the enterprise before designing, give the brand a clear style positioning, and then show the core vitality of the enterprise based on the preliminary research data in the subsequent design. Through the logo, the company makes the public known and familiar and gradually generates trust. The logo design of IKEA is taken as an example. The name of IKEA comes from the initials IK of its founder Ingvar Kamprad’s name, as well as the E in the farm where he lives in Elmtaryd and the A in the village Agunnaryd. The content of the logo is integrated with the actual geographical environment and the name of the founder, while the colors of the logo are yellow and blue using the colors of the Swedish flag, indicating that IKEA is from Sweden. The basic graphics of the logo are ellipses and rectangles. Although the fonts are designed with serif fonts, they give users a strong overall feeling. IKEA’s logo has undergone many adjustments since the early days of its design. In order to conform to the changing trend of the market, the saturation of blue and yellow will be reduced in 2019. In the actual logo application, the logo will be blurred into a small square when it is scaled down and then printed. The triangular serifs of the near and far in the font are made flatter, so as to expand the gap between the characters and solve the problem. At the same time, the adjustment of the entire structure makes the font in the middle look larger than before, and the visual experience is also more comfortable. It can be seen that the settings of color and structure in logo design are not static. Designers can extract the current fashionable elements and use various methods to redesign and finally achieve the desired effect.


### 4.2. Application in Enterprise Wayfinding System

The corporate wayfinding system is the image and symbol used to indicate the direction and divide the area in the company environment. It does not require too much language expression and uses minimalist graphic symbols to express accurate meaning across races and national boundaries. The enterprise wayfinding system accurately summarizes the function, appearance, and structure of a specific area location with concise logos, assisting users to establish a perfect plane direction map link network with their environment, helping users to understand the functions of landmark buildings more quickly. In a corporate environment, a designer of orientation signs is essential. As part of the corporate brand culture, the wayfinding system should be adapted to the corporate logo and fit the style of the entire corporate architectural design. In start-up companies, the demand for the wayfinding system is often not large. The office area can be divided into large blocks. When the specific branch road is located, the specific functional area can be guided, and the core concept of the enterprise, peace, and harmony can be integrated into the waypoint. The working atmosphere of employees is relieved and supported the sustainable and healthy development of the enterprise.


### 4.3. Application of Material Design in Enterprise

Material design is designed based on the company’s own needs. It does not account for a large proportion of actual sales. It is only a visual display of the company’s values, beliefs, and other spiritual civilizations. It integrates the corporate philosophy with the daily work and life of employees. As the direct users of the company’s products, employees can personally experience the values and core culture spread by the company, so that employees can remember the company’s culture and concepts more deeply in their minds and enhance their sense of identity and belonging to the company. The materials in the company’s external publicity include publicity posters, roll-ups, and leaflets. In actual cases, environmental weather and other factors can be properly considered. For example, in addition to preparing the sign-in form and paper in advance, brand-related umbrellas, ponchos, and other peripheral products are prepared in combination with weather factors, which can better spread the brand image and increase the user's favorability. For example, the milk tea brand HEYTEA pursues the trend in its material promotion, constantly incorporates innovative elements, and combines poster design with young trendy hotspots. The overall design style is in line with the current aesthetic preference of “beauty is justice” and at the same time does not deviate from the style of VI system design.


## 4.1. Application in Corporate Logo Design

Generally speaking, the top priority in VI design is the inspiration and design of the logo, also called Logo design, which is the visual embodiment of a brand. Logo design is unique and innovative. Its form includes text logo, image logo, and logo combined with image and text. It is a generalization of the overall spirit and material content of the enterprise and is also the core part of the entire VI design. Therefore, brand designers should understand and analyze the spiritual culture and material basis of the enterprise before designing, give the brand a clear style positioning, and then show the core vitality of the enterprise based on the preliminary research data in the subsequent design. Through the logo, the company makes the public known and familiar and gradually generates trust. The logo design of IKEA is taken as an example. The name of IKEA comes from the initials IK of its founder Ingvar Kamprad’s name, as well as the E in the farm where he lives in Elmtaryd and the A in the village Agunnaryd. The content of the logo is integrated with the actual geographical environment and the name of the founder, while the colors of the logo are yellow and blue using the colors of the Swedish flag, indicating that IKEA is from Sweden. The basic graphics of the logo are ellipses and rectangles. Although the fonts are designed with serif fonts, they give users a strong overall feeling. IKEA’s logo has undergone many adjustments since the early days of its design. In order to conform to the changing trend of the market, the saturation of blue and yellow will be reduced in 2019. In the actual logo application, the logo will be blurred into a small square when it is scaled down and then printed. The triangular serifs of the near and far in the font are made flatter, so as to expand the gap between the characters and solve the problem. At the same time, the adjustment of the entire structure makes the font in the middle look larger than before, and the visual experience is also more comfortable. It can be seen that the settings of color and structure in logo design are not static. Designers can extract the current fashionable elements and use various methods to redesign and finally achieve the desired effect.


## 4.2. Application in Enterprise Wayfinding System

The corporate wayfinding system is the image and symbol used to indicate the direction and divide the area in the company environment. It does not require too much language expression and uses minimalist graphic symbols to express accurate meaning across races and national boundaries. The enterprise wayfinding system accurately summarizes the function, appearance, and structure of a specific area location with concise logos, assisting users to establish a perfect plane direction map link network with their environment, helping users to understand the functions of landmark buildings more quickly. In a corporate environment, a designer of orientation signs is essential. As part of the corporate brand culture, the wayfinding system should be adapted to the corporate logo and fit the style of the entire corporate architectural design. In start-up companies, the demand for the wayfinding system is often not large. The office area can be divided into large blocks. When the specific branch road is located, the specific functional area can be guided, and the core concept of the enterprise, peace, and harmony can be integrated into the waypoint. The working atmosphere of employees is relieved and supported the sustainable and healthy development of the enterprise.


## 4.3. Application of Material Design in Enterprise

Material design is designed based on the company’s own needs. It does not account for a large proportion of actual sales. It is only a visual display of the company’s values, beliefs, and other spiritual civilizations. It integrates the corporate philosophy with the daily work and life of employees. As the direct users of the company’s products, employees can personally experience the values and core culture spread by the company, so that employees can remember the company’s culture and concepts more deeply in their minds and enhance their sense of identity and belonging to the company. The materials in the company’s external publicity include publicity posters, roll-ups, and leaflets. In actual cases, environmental weather and other factors can be properly considered. For example, in addition to preparing the sign-in form and paper in advance, brand-related umbrellas, ponchos, and other peripheral products are prepared in combination with weather factors, which can better spread the brand image and increase the user's favorability. For example, the milk tea brand HEYTEA pursues the trend in its material promotion, constantly incorporates innovative elements, and combines poster design with young trendy hotspots. The overall design style is in line with the current aesthetic preference of “beauty is justice” and at the same time does not deviate from the style of VI system design.


## 5. Conclusion

Traditional corporate brands in the “Internet +” era are facing the pressure of survival in new market choices, and they urgently need to cultivate Internet thinking. Only by grasping the design trend can we conform to the social trend and achieve breakthrough changes. To this end, traditional enterprises adopt highly emotional design presentation methods and use efficient and low-cost social communication channels to quickly integrate their brand cartoon images into people’s daily lives. By studying the design cases of successful brand cartoon images at home and abroad, combined with the theoretical knowledge of design semiotics and symbol communication, this paper summarizes the rich meanings of brand cartoon images from design construction to audience reception. In addition, this paper also conducts a guided exploration of design requirements for the younger target groups of traditional corporate brands and completes the design of their cartoon images.



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*Source: 1436733-2022-04-22.xml*