Preliminary Exploration on the Application of Saussure Sign Concept in Bio-Inspired Design: A Case of Tiantoushui Doll-Design

Abstract

Simply, shape bionics is to extract an image feature of natural objects, and most of the techniques for transforming and presenting are focused on metaphorical effects. In particular, the extraction process of metaphor design seems to be related to the concept of Saussure signs. Therefore, this research took the doll design of the Tiantoushui community in Changhua County, Taiwan as an example and attempted to use the Saussure concept to extract and evaluate the signs of bio-inspired design. The results showed that a total of three doll works symbolized respectively rice, guava, and pomelo implied the signification of local region by integrating the Saussure code image with the sign-image of the regional nature and transforming its content into “commodity design” and further transferring into “the product value of cultural and creative”. In addition, the specific extraction process included 1) Extraction of image—adjectives in creative products; 2) Meaning space of image—adjec- tives in creative products; 3) Extraction and determination of design elements of creative products, and 4) Combined the sensibility of creative products and design elements to derive design rules. After preliminary exploration of the extraction steps above, a concrete and efficient bio-inspired design process was proposed in this work. Besides, it was inferred that if further combined with the post-modern design style, it may not only simplify the design elements of creative products but also enhance the design connotations in the future.