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Dimensions of Iconicity
Edited by Angelika Zirker, Matthias Bauer, Olga Fischer and Christina Ljungberg
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 15] 2017
► pp. 229–246

The role of iconicity in package design

A case of the contemporary marketing of traditional Japanese confectionery

| University of Geneva

This paper demonstrates how iconicity functions in the contemporary marketing of Japanese traditional confectionery (wagashi) brands by analysing package designs. Two different brands, Toyara and Higashiya, are used to identify how company policies are embodied in the packages. The results show that (1) four different alphabets function differently to mirror their intrinsic meanings and images; (2) there are iconic resemblances in their forms to convey the company images and policies; and (3) a package is iconic to a product in a new type of wagashi brand. In consequence, I mean to illustrate that in the contemporary wagashi marketing iconicity is an important medium not only to attract the customers by its aesthetic features but also to create a new image, ‘Wa-Modern (modernised Japaneseness)’, which is now the trend applied to various product design contexts in Japanese society.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Analytical data: Traditional and modernised wagashi
    • 2.1The history of Japanese confectionery, wagashi
    • 2.2Data: Traditional and modern wagashi brands
  • 3.Data analysis
    • 3.1Typography
    • 3.2Iconic resemblance between packages and wagashi
  • 4.Conclusion: Iconicity in Japanese contemporary marketing
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.15.13shi
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Shibata, Ayako
2020. Iconicity in branding. In Operationalizing Iconicity [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17], ► pp. 246 ff. DOI logo

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