Cultural intertextuality in contemporary youth food packaging

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop an innovative strategy for applying cultural intertextuality in contemporary youth-oriented food packaging, in response to modern consumption’s expectations for rapid legibility, social shareability, brand coherence, and cultural respect. This paper constructs a conceptual framework through literature synthesis and crosscase visual analysis. The framework establishes an analytical vocabulary and a set of design heuristics for discussing–and guiding–the responsible use of cultural references in both the creation and evaluation of youth-oriented packaging. This research culminates in an integrated design strategy tailored to cultural intertextuality in youth food packaging. Moving beyond simple symbolic borrowing, it proposes an information-first layout logic that prioritizes a stable core information structure and then introduces intertextual cultural references to balance clarity with cultural meaning. The paper further explains how layout order and intertextual resources can be coordinated to strengthen recognizability and shareability, and it articulates heuristic prompts for design review (e.g., rapid recognition, quotability for social sharing, and cultural provenance) as discussion-oriented criteria rather than experimentally validated metrics. Overall, this study presents a multi-component framework that links principles of visual communication with ethically oriented referencing principles, emphasizing communication efficiency while supporting responsible cultural borrowing in both design development and critique