Abstract: As an item of intangible cultural heritage, the sansheng dances have unique ethnic, regional and cultural characteristics. In addition to rich cultural content, their visual images contain a variety of design elements, including costume elements, color elements, pattern elements and animation elements. To explore deep into these inherent elements can provide rich reference materials to design of related cultural products. This paper presents an analysis of the sansheng dances in three aspects - artistic and design value, element transformation method in cultural product design, and application strategies of the visual images in cultural product design - to help enhance the design value of the sansheng-dance images of the Yi people in design of cultural products.

Key words: the sansheng dance of the Yi people, design element, sansheng-dance image, cultural product