A Study On The Application Of Cultural Products And Identity Design In Cultural Heritage Tourist Destinations

Cultural identity plays a crucial role in enhancing the perceived value of local heritage assets, enabling cultural tourism destinations to strengthen symbolic recognition and economic competitiveness. Since 1978, when China declared reform and opening up, it has been promoting various cultural policies at the central and local government levels to create economic added value through culture and enhance national image and competitiveness. In particular, cultural heritage sites and museums are focusing on developing related cultural products. Cultural resources serve as a major foundation for expressing visual symbols. The purpose of cultural design is not only the intangible asset of culture, but also the actual design for tangible cultural products, that is, to effectively make consumers aware of their functions, characteristics, and values through the expression of visual symbols, thereby imprinting the identity as a symbol and a complete entity. Before proposing a design manual necessary for developing cultural heritage tourism site identity design, we examined the current status of cultural heritage site identity design and cultural products in Korea and China. As a result, we were able to confirm that the work of composing cultural heritage tourism site identities is urgent in order to develop a solid cultural heritage identity and to promote the development of various cultural products in the future. In order to conduct a cultural analysis on the identity composition, which is the keyword of this study, the basic direction for the composition of cultural heritage tourist destinations and their design development was set by limiting it to architecture, letters, and traditional symbolic elements. This study addresses the research question of how cultural products and identity design contribute to the branding of heritage tourist destinations, using comparative case analysis of China and Korea. It is concluded that the establishment of cultural heritage tourist destinations’ identities is a high value-added intangible asset that can vitalize the local economy and enable the region where cultural heritage sites are located to develop sustainably as a cultural city. It is expected that this study will become a model case for establishing the identity of cultural heritage tourist destinations throughout China and developing various cultural products in the future.