On the Question of Whether You Are Suitable for the Industry of Design 

During the design teaching career of nearly 30 years, the most deep impression is that, when interviewing the students every year, I frequently hear the students say: "I like painting since I was a child, so I am interested in design; I have been learning painting since childhood, and go to the art class at the National High School", seemingly indicating that such answers represent the exactly correct path for the students to enter the design department and receive the pure education from professional designers.

When I served as the executive director of the design department, every time I handled the application for dropping out or transferring to another department, the most common words I heard from the frustrated students with dilated pupils is that: "I lack creativity, I neither grasp nor draw the idea, I found that I was not suitable for learning design"; the situation has gone into reverse within less than a year. The original design dreams turned into a cloud-covered cloud, the life lost the purpose, and design is no longer loved by these students. It seems that the painting is not necessarily associated with design; if parents think their children are gifted in painting, then they send their children to learn painting skills, but that is no longer an advantage for learning design. Obviously, parents and children need to deeply understand the design, before they decide to learn design.

If painting is only about presenting what you saw into the paper, or purely beautifying the existing picture, I am afraid this is not what the design industry expects from rookie designers. "You need to consider your service objects from the perspective of their position, to consider their expectations, turn such expectations into viable ideas, and express the ideas in the most comprehensible way to interact with the set goals in the meaningful manner. " Such words may be regarded as the description of the service contents in the current design industry. Therefore, the key essence for painting in the field of design is not to "describe or present" a known picture, but to play the role of a communication interface conveying meaningful action, and an efficient expression form that comprehensively utilizing a variety of media materials, no longer constrained by the performance framework of the current sectoral system. In other words, the painting needs to convey the essence of innovation. Only in this way, the students can change their previous answers into: "I have always used the way of painting to show my imagination and opinion about a certain thing... so I feel myself Interested in design...", clearly demonstrating the strong evidence of your close relationship with design.

The Essence of Design from the Perspective of Modern Design

Compared with the development history of other disciplines, industrial design (product design) is much younger; in retrospect of the mid-nineteenth century after the Western Industrial Revolution, the technical ability of industrialized mass production has had a tremendous impact on all aspects of human life. In the early days, the products produced with the molds lost the beauty of the craftsmanship that was produced by hand in the past. People with lofty ideals in the society were so angry that the Arts & Craft Movement was launched in the UK, which called for a conservative return to production model dominated by the hand-made production. At that time, Germany in Europe Continent was also hit by the above movement.

Around 1890, the voice of the reform movement like in Britain appeared. However, at that time, instead of backtracking like Britain did, the German people with lofty ideals called for improvement on the quality of industrial products and the way they were manufactured; quality products should guide the social atmosphere which was dominated by the mass produced cheap and popular goods at that time. German people also proposed to promote the new production approach of mass product, so as to guide the labor and capital to retrieve the "harmonious culture" during the normalized modeling process, and to make workers unfamiliar with production process regain "joy of labor", which are all the creative ideas. In order to accept the changes brought up by the new industrial technology, the Deutscher Werkbund (DWB) was founded in October 1907 by twelve artists together with twelve companies in Munich. Looking back at this history, we can see that the beginning of modern design not only reveals a new introduction of industrial technology, but also a comprehensive consideration of the influence on society and the working class; the establishment of DCB co-founded by well-known artists and entrepreneurs also indicates a complex jointly consisting of the modern designers and artists, engineer's technology, and the entrepreneur's production and marketing thought genes.

DCB holds an unprecedented sense of mission to undertake the mission of “promoting the handicraft industry to continue its craftsmanship and creation through education, promotion and consistent views on all relevant issues, under the influence of the integration of art, industry and crafts”; using the social responsibility viewpoint of art aesthetic education to handle the issues of the improved industrialized living environment, and promoting the cultural "education" of the people with the daily items of the "Gutes Form", or the so-called "cultivation of morality". Such the purpose determines that DCB plays the leading role in the modern industrial design (product design). In consideration of the development of "social design" and "service design" in recent years, it seems that the design pioneers have already planted the seeds of hope for the development of design and development in the 21st century a hundred years ago.

It is worth mentioning that the people, events and items related to DCB in 1907 also gave birth to Das Staatliche Bauhaus (1919-1933), which has influenced the world of design education for centuries. Back to the present 2019, today’s world also faces the digital technology blurring the boundary between the entity and virtuality, resembling the scene of industrial technology impacting craftsmanship a hundred years ago; in order to make a macro layout for the future in the design world, we need to study and reflect on the history of design in the past 100 years, and when facing the ever-changing future development, we should calmly make the decision since we have been enlightened.

Participating in the Exhibition Competition is a Shortcut to Chase Fame and Fortune? Or Should It Be A Ceremony to Pay Tribute to the Society and Teachers?

Let’s start with one story; In Taiwan, there is a routine event in the design education sector held in May each year. The young students from Taiwan and the general-design field will all present their designs to the public and the industry leaders. Every year’s event would be unprecedented and grant. Tens of thousands of works which could be called the masterpieces for the participants, in the education stage, eager to show to the outside world, and looking forward to winning applause and attraction from all sides.

In the past few years, anyone who visited the exhibition should be able to feel that this stage is constantly being over-hyped, and it makes the noise of vendor’s hawking, even noisier than the voice in market. The exhibition shows rounds of rounds of brilliant dynamic presentation, and features the luxuriant decoration built with money and creativity. The powerful lights seem to symbolize the airspace power of the various schools. The marketing approach emphasizing the importance of high momentum submerges and drowns the exhibition where students should have purely presented their works to the society.

Under all the luxurious decoration and lively activities, tens of thousands of creative works and their owners become smaller, and it is difficult for the visitors who are interested in the exhibition to calm down to carefully and carefully appreciate the works, and then give appropriate advice to young people. Anyone who have interest could check how much money was spent in this short four-day exhibition. Is such a large amount of money really necessary?

During, I will usually blame the students who waste materials and do not appreciate the hardship of their parents who make money to support them. Over the years, the atmosphere of the big environment seems to make every participated school forced to judge the hero based on the number of won prizes. Is this necessary?

If the young design students are innocent victims, then should the senior and directors behind the scene come forward to apologize and reverse the tide? Is this necessary?

Participating in the exhibition competition does not mean participating in a glamorous trade show. Young generation of designer are supposed to present their works to the society to show their efforts to change the society. The exhibition is supposed to be a platform where young designers can pay tribute to the teachers and senior and show their intrinsic characters. 

Should a Design Work Be Rich of Ideal Vision? Or Should it be a Work Which is More Likely to Win Design Award? 

Imagine such a scene: if all the design works could be put into use in our daily life, will our society be better off? If we go back to the past few years, the accumulated design works should already be sufficient to make our lives very closed to the beautiful dream of happy life; but that is apparently not the case, because the operators facing business difficulties in Taiwan’s design industry are still in need of great support from government, the salary level of designers remains at the bottom, and the events that low price stifles the design services are not news at all.

There are thousands of new pieces of design work with creative ideals each year and designers are also willing to spend time on creating their works, why is our design industry unwilling to mass produce such works? Why is society unwilling to pay for such works and recognize the tangible convenience and intangible value brought up by the design? Why is the media unwilling to continue to report design works, and inspire our design works to play a key role in the new life movement of "Benefiting Society with Design"?

Instead of questioning the external environment, I deem reflecting on the design education field, and pondering on the dialogue would be a better choice. If the issues of design within campus are always around the popular trend without the reasonable reason, or add brilliance to the already splendor goods, then the callow students of design department will definitely not be a match against the professional designers already earning their living on society; the exhibition competition has become a lively and stereotyped large-scale event, and such the fate has been repeated year after year. Most of the young people who participated neither achieve themselves nor practice their design to realize their dream of improving society, and the design industry also watched on the sideline and ponder over whether they should invest into the design department to enable to embark on the adventure of design innovation.

On the contrary, the teachers in the school should play the role of educators, motivate the young and warm-blooded students to humbly explore the non-consumption global trend issues and social issues of prioritized public interest from the crowds of people, to remove the obstacles through the incessant spirit of design enthusiasm, to regard the design as a career that could win the respect from society, and run their careers of design during their lifetime step by step; students need to listen to the criticism from the industry during their participation into the exhibition, and pass the tests of a variety of cynicism, so that they will enjoy the rebirth after they break through numerous rounds of negative comments, and gradually experience the new realm of cross-domain service brought by design innovation.

Therefore, give up the short-term interest in chasing the perfect design work at your learning stage, and make your decision of challenging the social design which is in line with your long-term interest. If we fail to first serve our society with our design unselfishly, it is difficult to expect our society to share resources and create an atmosphere conducive to design. This is a blessed fair game!

The Industrial Design Association of Taiwan, founded in 1967 and advocating the idea of Design Thinking, has been gathering the resources of cross-domain designers since 2016, to facilitate the project of bringing new life to the local regions through design, proposed National Development Council, and to prove that design can bring changes to the uneven development social issues caused by the aging population and sub-replacement fertility, enabling the government to regard this project as the issue with national security strategic level, to announce the year 2019 as the first year of promoting the project of bringing new life to local regions, and to demonstrate that design stands for the professional force worth the trust from national government when implementing the policies; the forces of design innovation can rise up to the level of policy which could contribute to the national sustainable development, from the level of project targeted at solving social issues. 

Find the Intrinsic Character Appropriate in All Aspects, Achieve the Lifetime Design Career Through Character

Design is a kind of noble service, and it treats and cares about all human beings and species equally. This is not a high-profile feature, but the keynote; since the young rookie designers have no worldly burden, the advancement of technology can encourage them to make infinite innovation, and young designers are supposed to be eager to embrace ideals and personal heights; to achieve such the realm, dear young design students, you should not only create the explicit "taste", but also show the inner meaning of "character" in your innovation proposal; I look forward to witnessing you are all willing to take on mission of sustainable development entrusted by this era. 

There is no shortcut, the designer must first consistently cultivate the "intrinsic character"!