Jointly supervised by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Education, organized by the the Industrial Development Bureau (Ministry of Economic Affairs, MOEA) and organized and hosted by the Taiwan Design Center, the 38th Young Designers’ Exhibition took place from May 3-6 (Friday to Monday) at the Taiwan World Trade Center Exhibition Halls 1 and 3; the award ceremony commenced the morning of May 3rd.
This year, the Young Designers’ Exhibition — the largest scale and longest running student design award in the world — was organized in a way to facilitate collaboration between industry and academia, with the hopes of igniting innovation and achieving practical results. 3,848 works designed by 10,333 students from 137 different departments across 65 schools entered the competition; of those, 130 were the results of collaboration between industry and academia, demonstrating how the extraordinary innovative ability of up-and-coming designers can solve existing problems. We welcome business and design enthusiasts to come to the exhibition hall to experience the spirit of design firsthand and support Taiwan’s talented young designers!
▲ The Minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Shen Jong-Chin, delivering a speech to attendees.
The 2019 Young Designers’ Exhibition includes awards in the following categories: Product Design, Graphic Design, Visual Communication Design, Packaging Design, Craft Design, Spatial Design, Fashion Design, Digital Games Design, and Digital Multimedia Design. This year’s Young Designers’ Exhibition centers around the theme “Undefined”, a theme selected by this year’s Young Designers’ Exhibition curator — and the winner of the Golden Pin Design Award 2018 — Hom Liou. In Taiwan, 15,000 students graduate with degrees related to design every year; after graduation, they pursue careers in both public and private sectors, enhancing every facet of society with creative thought.
This year’s Young Designers’ Exhibition invited seven young professionals, who have become well-known figures in their field — in sectors as diverse as food, costume design, and pottery — to discuss how their design education influenced their later work. In accordance with this year’s theme, the award ceremony organizers encourage up-and-coming designers to continue balancing the fundamentals of design with the entrepreneurial energy as they continue into their careers — and spread the influential power of design into sectors across the industry.
▲ Group photo with the minister (middle of the front row) and representatives from each school.
In order to bring design students’ innovative ability closer to the private sector, the Industrial Development Bureau (under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, MOEA) launched the “YODEX Industry-Academic Collaborative Project”, which has already entered its 5th year. This project invites enterprises to provide topics for student designers and offer guidance, thus closing the gap between industry and academia.
This year, 16 enterprises were invited to participate, including Compal Eletronics, Taiwan Hitachi, Sanyang Motors, NOVA Design, LiangYu Coral, Spring Pool Glass, Shuter, 5% Design Action, and Flotrend Corporation. 59 different student teams were selected to participate in the project, funneling their creative expertise into one of four major themes: Social Culture, Smart Technology, Environmental Sustainability, and Innovative Life. This project showcases how industry can nurture the next generation of talent, and how students can use innovative thinking to solve existing problems.
▲ Minister listening to the students explain the concept behind their works.
Besides inviting more enterprises to participate in the ceremony, the organizers also declared the fourth day of the ceremony (May 6th) to be “Enterprise Day”, inviting over 2,000 people from 1,000 different industries and foundations to attend. The Young Pin Design Awards judges will be present to bridge the gap between academia and industry, helping students take control of the opportunity to showcase their works and themselves to representatives from across the industry — and helping enterprises discover burgeoning talent. Besides this, for the first time ever, the Young Designers’ Exhibition will cooperate with Taiwan’s job search platform, 1111 Job Bank, to launch to Young Designers’ Exhibition Exclusive Job Site, where students can explore over 1,500 design-related opportunities and quickly find their dream job.
This year is the first time attendees can enter the exhibition using a digital ticket, both reducing wait time and waste from paper ticketing. Alternatively, attendees can pay for the ticket by tapping their EasyCards — spending less time purchasing tickets and more time appreciating the brilliant creative works by Taiwan’s budding young designers. For more information about this year’s Young Designers’ Exhibition, please visit the website.
