Design Pathways for Tourism Cultural and Creative Products Incorporating Mojiang Intangible Cultural Heritage Elements from the Perspective of Digital Translation

Abstract

Against the background of the continuing integration of culture and tourism and the rapid development of digital media, tourism cultural and creative products based on Yunnan intangible cultural heritage (ICH) still face several problems, including superficial use of cultural symbols, product homogenization, insufficient practicality, and fragmented digital interaction. Taking the visual identity system of the Mojiang cultural tourism brand as a case study, this research employs literature review, symbol extraction, case analysis, and prototype analysis to examine resources including Hani culture, the legend of the silver pheasant, the Tropic of Cancer, the International Twins Festival, purple rice, and terraced landscapes, and to analyze their transformation into intellectual-property (IP) characters, derivative cultural and creative products, and a tourism mini-program. The findings indicate that digital translation is not the replication of traditional patterns. Rather, it converts cultural content into recognizable, reusable, and communicable design units through resource identification, semantic encoding, visual assetization, productization in specific scenarios, and interactive communication. The Mojiang case establishes a coordinated structure of “IP characters–cultural and creative products–digital interaction.” It demonstrates that local cultural tourism brands should take cultural semantics as their core, unify the visual language of characters, products, and interfaces, and construct a continuous experience extending from cultural cognition and tourism services to consumption and communication. On this basis, the study proposes a five-step design pathway for Yunnan ICH-based tourism cultural and creative products, providing a reference for cultural tourism branding and ICH revitalization in ethnic-minority regions.