An artistic element in the system of teaching packaging design in Russian universities at the beginning of the 21th century

The training of packaging designers in modern Russian universities strongly depends on the profile, resources and understanding of the essence of the profession in each educational institution. The bias is either towards functionality and manufacturability in the case of non-artistic universities, or towards visual expressiveness in relation to artistic products, but without immersion in the subtleties of production, the study of the features of materials and their recycling, management and branding. Such an ambiguous understanding of the role of an artistic element and its interaction with other related fields contributes to the formation of different learning systems, which, as a rule, do not provide a single artistic and functional complex of knowledge and skills. However, the demand for the profession determines the need to change this state of affairs due to the shortage of specialists who have undergone comprehensive training. In connection with the above, the solution is seen as follows: for universities with a technical and other bias, it is necessary to introduce art disciplines into the educational process as basic for the specialty of a packaging designer. Art universities should take care of establishing active cooperation with organizations of real production to provide students with a practical base of work.