On the Text Art of Packaging Design II

However, some of the packing instructions that appear to be a bit mentally handicapped in the legally sound Western world are likely to bring unimaginable losses to themselves. For example, in the above Article 10, there was a case that caused a lawsuit. The supermarket vendor promoted children's "Superman costumes" that imitated the moon astronaut's space suits. The advertisements on the giant banners provided by the supermarket makers used the words " If you want to fly in space, wear 'Superman Costume`." For a time, the business was booming and the orders were flying like snowflakes, but whoever thought of a disaster was coming. After a child is dressed in a space suit, he is really ready to fly into space. He cannot fly. He thinks that parents have deceived him. The food is not delicious and even the kindergartens are unwilling to go on. So the parents invited a lawyer to sue the production. We sell "children's clothing" for children and commit "fraud crime", "counterfeiting crime" and "crime of child abuse." The details will not be described in detail. In short, due to the lack of thinking about the packaging of goods, manufacturers will suffer huge economic losses. With the further improvement of China’s legal system, especially the introduction of a series of legal texts such as the protection of consumers, the above-mentioned similar cases can serve as a guide for us.

The use of the hidden dangers

With the improvement of life and technology, people have more and more goods that are in daily contact and use. However, more and more consumers have reported that the descriptions of some products make people unable to read, or the contents are simple, make people at a loss. Or the profound ambiguity of the term has affected the normal use of the goods and even caused accidents. At present, the specifications of medicines, mobile phones, cosmetics, air conditioners, pesticides, fertilizers, and other products circulating on the market all have the problem of “say” rather than “explicit” to varying degrees, and consumer disputes arising therefrom have also shown an upward trend. According to the investigation and analysis, the following problems exist in the field of product specification currently:

1. The term is not proper and the sentence is not fluent. Some product specifications, especially those translated from English manuals, are not only non-standardized in terms of the project, but also unclear in the expression of language, do not use popular language, do not meet the reading habits of Chinese consumers, and the content is difficult to understand.

2. The fonts use traditional Chinese and English mixed and mixed. Even some product manuals, simplified and traditional Chinese characters are used in combination with Chinese and English, or marked in plain English, making consumers indulgent.

3. Using a lot of technical terms and foreign language, so many consumers do not understand. The parameters in some product specifications are too professional and there are too many terms. In some product specifications, technical indicators, illustrations, etc. are heavily used in foreign languages. Even if the terms "on" and "off" are used in home appliances, some manufacturers are also willing to use the English "ON" and "OFF" to indicate, otherwise it is considered to be "earth", not enough grades.

4. False propaganda, exaggerating efficacy. For example, some air-conditioning products are advertised as "low-noise". In the specification, the noise at low-speed start is used as a standard to introduce to consumers. In addition, some of the introductory products such as “most effective”, “best”, and “super-efficient” appeared in product introductions. Some manuals appeared unscientific and unobjective texts such as "pure plants", "customer's first choice", "effective treatment efficiency 100%", and even declared that "consistency in serving tablets can eliminate all discomfort and heal". With a clear self-promotional color.

5. There are various product names. This is particularly true of some imported product manuals that literally translate English manuals into Chinese. Taking the drug manual as an example, some describe the "pharmacological action" as "characteristic" and "adverse reaction" as "other possible action of the drug", etc., which are extremely irregular and inaccurate.

6. There is a "merger" phenomenon in the content of the project. Some manuals will write together the contents indicated by sub-items according to regulations or routines. If the adverse drug reactions, precautions, and taboos are written in the “Attention” item, they will not only be read by consumers. The trouble of understanding, and some of the important contents related to medication, are often easily overlooked or cause troubles in understanding, and some of the important contents related to the safety of medications are often easily overlooked or caused omissions.

7. The lack of warning content or the content of security warnings is ambiguous. Some of the instructions on personal safety, the content of the warning is not specific enough, such as writing only "toxic, please be careful" and other very abstract text, will not play a warning role in safe use. Some other companies have ambiguous descriptions of adverse reactions, taboos, and evasions. They can write less, write less, write if they can not write, and say less about negative aspects of the product.

8. The configurations, functions, and products listed on the specifications of the high-tech products actually differ.

9. Unauthorized expansion of the scope of application. This kind of situation is more common in commodities such as pesticides. For example, if a certain pesticide is used only for certain types of fruits such as watermelons and grapes, the labeling is applied to all fruits or most fruits, which makes many fruit farmers be deceived.

10. Some product manuals, or font sizes that are too small, make the elderly look particularly strenuous; or the printed text is vague, making it difficult to read clearly; or the quality of the printed paper is poor, and defects are likely to occur when opening the package, affecting reading.