Application and research of brand identity design for wedding celebration companies in China

: Young people are an important force in the development of the new era. From the point of view of consumption, many reports show that the young generation, mainly the post-90s, is the main force of consumption, and that more diversified and personalised consumption patterns are becoming more and more trendy. In terms of cultural heritage, the official media has also expressed the view that young people are the new force in cultural heritage. With the post-90s and post-95s gradually entering the marriageable age, the distinctive brand wedding celebration services will gain more recognition in the market. Combined with the trend analysis and user demand, wedding celebration enterprises should have more accurate brand positioning and corporate image, so as to win the recognition of target consumers. The subject is the visual image of the brand, focusing on the brand image design of wedding celebration companies to suit the individual needs of the new generation of consumers, to find new ideas for its brand image design, in order to achieve brand rejuvenation, so as to create brand awareness and trust. Focus on brand identity, emphasise uniqueness and rejuvenation, and better serve the new generation of consumers. Wedding celebration companies should take the consumer groups as the first priority, keep up with the times, cultural connotations for the credit backing, to convey the brand culture, design a corporate brand image and corporate services in line with the current generation of consumer groups consumer personality. The project analyses the Four Seasons Wedding Celebration brand from multiple angles and levels, and through research and analysis and creative development, and deepens the design, the brand image design is finally completed.


Background of the study
In recent years, the wedding industry has accelerated the transformation and upgrading, the market reshuffle intensified, new trends in the industry, new opportunities continue to emerge. New ideas and new models are emerging all the time. The distinctive, open-minded, rational and confident post-95s are gradually changing the traditional rules of wedding celebrations and developing their own unique wedding ceremonies. Under the influence of this new generation, the $100 billion market for weddings has also undergone tremendous changes.

Consumer upgrade, wedding industry bucking the trend
Seventy years ago, material conditions were not as good as they are today. In the context of consumer upgrading, people have gone from having enough to eat and drink to being concerned about fine health, from warm clothing to a variety of styles, from bicycles to cars for travel, and from a very simple wedding process to a qualitative leap today. The chairman of the Ruiting Group, Asia Hu, said that the first thing to do is to identify the preferences of young people, what do they like? Where is the young people? The brand needs to cater to young people to upgrade, need to have fashion.
From a design perspective, wedding celebrations are designed to meet the needs of a younger generation of consumers with higher quality. For the new generation of young people, marriage is no longer a ceremony, but a comprehensive experience that presents an attitude and lifestyle, is unique, focuses on rituals, fills the atmosphere and meets the desire to share. Therefore, marriage consumption is not only a consumption act, but also an important life experience. The new generation of young people are more inclined to combine their own economic situation, the actual site layout, scenery and other specific circumstances, to find a wedding style that really suits them. The future of weddings will be more open, multiform, with a unique perspective to develop.
Zheng Rongxiang, a well-known wedding observer, believes that new forms of weddings are becoming popular, and some special venues will be favoured by the newlyweds, unlike traditional wedding spaces such as hotels and restaurants. We can integrate the wedding with cultural tourism, scenic spots, B&B, etc., so as to build a rich industry, mutual integration, synergy and sustainable business ecology, to achieve the flow of co-creation. For example, combined with the current point of interest of young people -like to go to the net red, then the brand can be the wedding scene for the net red, or even the venue to create a net red card place, to give the newcomers to shape a brand is a fashionable, trendy and fresh feeling. For the wedding business, product upgrades and brand iteration are the primary problem, cannot meet the will be eliminated.

Sinking markets, a new force in industry development
Over 70% of China's population comes from the sink market. As the level of economic development continues to rise, urbanisation continues to advance, infrastructure construction and logistics systems continue to improve, and disposable income of residents increases, the lower markets are showing unprecedented consumption potential.
Compared to the mature first and second tier markets, the sink market is still in a state of development and has huge room for future growth. Given the unique nature of the wedding itself, the lower market can narrow the gap with the first-tier cities in almost every other dimension in terms of the importance attached to the wedding and the concept of consumption.
Zheng Rongxiang said, out of the circle down, is the main theme of the wedding enterprises to break the game. For the traditional wedding business: sink refers to, the wedding hall / travel art base / wedding integration hall and other business models into the third and fourth tier cities. The sinking market has become an emerging force in the wedding industry. In the future, the layout of the sink market is also bound to be a major trend. With the rise of aesthetic culture, online consultation and quality of life, the post-95s are pursuing higher and higher quality of weddings, and for them, the choice of wedding services is much more effect-driven than price-driven, and this market is like a blue ocean, full of infinite hope.
Driven by them, the nation's wedding industry has transformed from quantitative growth to fine customisation, and the newlywed population's consumer demand for marriage has gradually shifted from a single demand in the past to personalised, customised and diversified demand. The trillion dollar personalised wedding market will eventually usher in new opportunities.

Methodology of the study
In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the current state of wedding celebrations, the author has used documentary research, fieldwork and inductive methods throughout the paper.
The literature research method was used to review a large amount of literature on wedding celebrations, to fully research the folklore and cultural traditions of different regions, and to visit local companies in the relevant industries. The real-life information was analysed and collated. The research on the wedding celebration industry was summarised and the key points of the corporate brand design were analysed to define the thesis.
The field research method is to visit local wedding celebration companies, florists and hotels to understand the local wedding celebration process and to conduct a competitive analysis of different companies in the same industry.
Based on the literature and field research, the main research direction is the new user needs of the new generation of consumers, and the brand image of the company is explored to suit the new needs.

The current situation of China's wedding industry
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, the proportion of people getting married in China has been decreasing since 2013. At the same time, the number of registered marriages in the first half of the year was only 5.436 million, a 30.3 per cent drop compared to 2020, due to the epidemic during the epidemic.
Although the marriage rate has been declining year on year, it is encouraging to see that the post-90s and post-95s are forming a 100-billion-dollar consumer market. For these young couples, marriage is no longer a simple "task" process, but a unique, "ritualistic", full of "atmosphere", to meet the desire to share a comprehensive experience, the "big event" of marriage in the new generation of young people, cannot be sloppy. Nearly 80% of couples-to-be attach great importance to it, and are even willing to make a high level of personal commitment.  Newcomers are more willing to invest time and effort, despite the variety of wedding forms, a series of processes remain the same, from proposal/engagement planning, to wedding dress shooting, jewellery and diamond ring customisation, and banquet catering, and so on. The desire to share the good feelings through social media. In the wake of the current epidemic, the market for wedding celebrations has undergone a major reshuffle and restructuring. After several waves of the epidemic, many couples are no longer looking for a big and comprehensive wedding ceremony, but rather a lighter wedding that is both personal and ritualistic. The wedding trend in third and fourth tier cities is considerable, and the current phenomenon of post-90s marriages shows that the trend of new marriages is slowly extending from first tier cities to third and fourth tier cities, and couples are more willing to return to their hometowns for weddings. In addition to choosing a warm and welcoming tone for the wedding scene, combining personal emotions and aesthetic attitudes, more than enjoying the festive atmosphere, the sense of ceremony is an essential part. The above points show that the post-2021 marriage group is getting younger and younger, and the percentage of them choosing to order a diamond ring in the bride price is quite high. These new generation of young people are more willing to return to their hometowns to organize weddings, in the wedding scene pay attention to the sense of ceremony at the same time, more enjoy from the festive atmosphere.

The current situation of wedding
company design and the problems that exist

Design for the masses
In a 2011 interview with the Harvard Business Review, Coca-Cola's global chief marketing officer Joe Tripodi made a distinct point about the current brand-consumer relationship: "We have to understand that as a TOC consumer goods company, today the consumer, the key opinion leader, can create more information than the business, and it is the consumer who has the It is the consumer who has the power to decide on the brand, not the company". In other words, it is the brand's user base that determines whether the brand ages or not. In a market environment, it is the consumer who is in charge of a brand's beauty and life cycle.
Nowadays, young people pay more and more attention to personalised development, with a unique wedding, rich in design of wedding supplies has become a beautiful vision of each pair of new couples, which is a huge potential and business opportunities in the industry, but the market design of wedding supplies is not satisfactory, the same design style, no cultural connotation and new ideas, and can not well convey the emotional demands of people. The design of wedding supplies needs to be not only beautiful in appearance, but more importantly, to express a sense of celebration. Not only do they need to be innovative and eye-catching, but they also need to resonate with the expression of this emotion. With the expansion of national horizons, only designs that are individual and culturally rich will resonate aesthetically and leave a lasting impression.

Poor brand awareness
In the face of the post-90s and post-95s young group's consumer demand, focus on the venue set and styling design, requiring uniqueness and a high sense of customization services. However, from the perspective of the graphic wedding supplies, the visual graphic design of wedding supplies on the market has a certain homogeneity, no clear brand graphics, disorderly, lack of integrity, so that the visual identity is not prominent enough, the brand symbol is not obvious. To improve the quality of the brand of wedding visuals, it is necessary to integrate the graphics and colours of wedding supplies from multiple directions to re-create a unified visual style.

Lack of national cultural connotations
In addition to symbolising the value of the product, the design of wedding accessories needs to represent the spirituality of the brand, helping consumers to discover a sense of belonging to a certain extent. In the past decade, Chinese women have been influenced by Western culture to prefer white dresses to the traditional red cheongsam. However, with a growing sense of Chinese cultural pride, the Z generation is beginning to re-examine and appreciate traditional Chinese culture. Today, many young couples are opting for wedding decorations, wedding dresses and gowns that blend Chinese and Western aesthetics.
Modern wedding supplies only pay attention to the universal emotion of celebration, lacking the characteristic culture to enhance the level of the product. With the erosion of Western culture and commercial profits, some simple and boring patterns are repeatedly used in the market, most of which are not favoured by consumers.
People are more attracted to items with cultural connotations," says Xu Chuanhai, founder of Suzhou-based bridal brand, "The combination of Chinese and Western elements is actually a fusion of multiple cultures, and we expect this to become a mainstream trend in the future. The new generation of young people are no longer obsessed with traditional etiquette, but are more concerned with selfexpression." Over the past 20 years, Jedi has grown from a small studio to a market leader, and has become popular with the new generation because of its focus on the consumer needs of the new generation.

The use of the Four Seasons Magpie
brand as an example in wedding corporate identity design

Design reasons
I found that the wedding market in the third and fourth tier cities is growing, but there are only one or two better wedding shops, not to mention the overall brand image planning, and some do not even have a logo, the big cities are better, but the homogenization of the situation is more common. The sinking market has not yet formed a complete brand of wedding company, understand that in today's wedding brand market development has matured, but the VI visual image design is not well used and attention, so with this subject to do a set of more overall wedding brand image design.
The current social development is very rapid, the consumer demand for material and cultural life is constantly improving, the wedding celebration planning service industry is no exception, young people's views and requirements for weddings are constantly changing, private customization and high-end wedding constantly appear, so the author has become interested in the wedding industry design research.

Design interpretation
While most of the wedding companies in the market are western style, the Four Seasons Magpie brand uses two magpies as the main logo graphic and focuses more on Chinese weddings. The magpie on the plum is one of the traditional Chinese auspicious motifs, as plum and eyebrow are the same sound, so the magpie flying on the branch of plum blossom has the meaning of happy eyebrows. In folklore, there is the beautiful festival of the seventh day of the seventh month, when all the magpies fly up to the river to build a magpie bridge so that the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid can meet. The plum blossom is the messenger of spring, and the magpie symbolises good luck and good fortune. The magpie therefore means good luck, joy and good fortune. The brand name Four Seasons Magpie comes from the fact that magpies are active all year round. The logo design features a magpie flying towards another magpie. The design of the logo is based on traditional Chinese painting and paper cutting, and the font is squared off, inheriting tradition and bringing in new ideas, reducing the variation of strokes while incorporating the millennium's favourite forms to enhance the structure of the strokes.

Standard colour development
The standard colour is an important factor symbolising the spirit of the brand and its culture, creating a strong impression through visual communication and achieving the role of colour in visual identity. Different consumer groups have different psychological reactions to the same colour stimuli, due to their own living environment, life experiences, interests, customs and ethnic traditions. There are many different forms of weddings today, but the public perception of wedding colours is still dominated by the colour red, mainly because in the traditional concept of a wedding the colour red symbolises liveliness and festivity. In terms of colour, choose a more stable shade, while with gold, more high-end.

Auxiliary graphics development
In order to maintain a high degree of consistency in the external image of the brand, the standard drafting of brand auxiliary graphics is used to standardise the proportional structure and spatial distance of brand auxiliary graphics in the application of various environments and materials. The precise formulation of auxiliary graphics is conducive to conveying brand values and shaping the brand image. Here, the image of a magpie with its wings unfurled and flying is used to express the dynamics of flight and to convey the vision of a happy event coming up. Ancillary graphics are also used extensively, in books, packaging, envelopes, postcards and more. In wedding celebrations, they convey a sense of luck and celebration. The use of secondary underlining helps to visualise brand values, creating a strong visual impact, a unified and unique visual style, and attracting the attention of consumers to effectively communicate the brand image.

Conclusion
Today's wedding companies are overwhelming, but the competition between the industry is increasingly fierce, the market for similar brands imitating each other is increasingly widespread, consumer spending such as the maturity of the reasoning has made the development of the wedding industry has become difficult. The brand company that can establish a reputation in the industry is in the minority. In the end is no brand awareness, or the company management does not recognize the importance of brand image design, communication and trust. With the development of the economy and social progress, the wedding industry is also constantly developing, nowadays the wedding industry is developing like hot tea, in the face of rational and discerning consumers, wedding celebration enterprises must pay new attention to the VI visual identity system integrated design. A good corporate image design can be seen as a bridge to establish a close relationship with consumers and help increase their trust and reputation.
Today's young people are post-90s and post-95s, they have strong personalities and need something new, which requires the brand image design of the wedding celebration company to carry out detailed analysis and positioning work, using excellent design cases and advanced design principles and techniques for LOGO diversification, commercialisation and innovative design. The company's products, services and culture are integrated into the design, and the overall image is unified and focused to communicate with consumers.