▲ The speakers of Golden Pin Salon 2019 in Macau, from the left which are Au-Chon Hin, Gina Hsu and Keng-Ming Liu.
Co-organized by the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Golden Pin Design Award, Design Perspectives x Golden Pin Salon headed to Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, and Macau this June to facilitate more design discourse. The final seminar, which took place on June 15 at the Macau Tower, had Au-Chon Hin, creative director of UNTITLED MACAO; Keng-Ming Liu, founder and creative director of Bito; and Gina Hsu, founder of Dong Hai Hospital Design Studio as guest speakers to discuss their design perspectives and cultural observations. A multitude of designers and guests participated in the Salon and formed an enthusiastic, engaging crowd.
Golden Pin Salon returned to Macau once again after its first visit in 2015. Shu-Ting Ai, deputy CEO of organizer Taiwan Design Center, noted in her speech that since the Golden Pin Design Award’s move towards an international audience in 2014, the Golden Pin Salon has hosted 30 seminars in 20 major Asian cities, actively interacting with designers in various locations. Ai expressed her gratitude to the Macau Fair & Trade Association for co-organizing and supporting the Salon to revisit Macau. Through the organization of the Salon, she also hoped to invite many more designers from Hong Kong and Macau to partake in the Golden Pin Design Award, so as to drive the movement for global development. Hwei-Ni Tsen, chief supervisor of the Macau Fair & Trade Association, stated that Macau strongly values the inheritance of ethnic Chinese culture and the development of design aesthetics, and hopes to encourage more local designers to share innovative creations and form a more diverse design culture through the Golden Pin Design Award.
▲ Liu shared the “secret ingredient” inside every creative project of the Bito team in his speech titled “Almost There.”
The first speaker of the day was Taiwanese director Keng-Ming Liu, who has settled in Taipei after returning from New York in 2012 and founded the motion design company Bito. He leads an interdisciplinary team of graphic, animation, image, and art designers, and continues to create innovative motion designs. Liu is a major innovator and inspiration in the field of motion design in Taiwan and Asia, and he shared the “secret ingredient” inside every creative project of the Bito team in his speech titled “Almost There.”
Liu believes that motion design is more than just narration or visual communication; it is a creation of sensory experiences that can trigger and shift viewers’ emotions. In this era of information explosion and the attention economy, Liu captured the attention of the masses and gained a powerful voice. Liu used Bito’s motion design projects for the 28th Golden Melody Awards and the Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade as examples to share how they came up with something so sharp and precise yet so warm and tender. In expressing his excitement of seeing the future growth and development of motion design, Liu said, motion design is still a new field waiting to be developed, no matter in Taiwan or all of Asia; every single attempt made today can be an important piece for the future.
▲ Hsu shared her journey of design and curations, including how she discovered stories from an old hospital.
Up next was Taiwanese designer Gina Hsu, who has devoted a lot of time to the development of local craft, sundry goods, and local production factories. Hsu shared her journey of design and curations, including how she discovered stories from an old hospital, factory, and stationery store, and discovered the influential power of design in her speech themed “Design Ferments: Journey Exploring the Hospital, Factory, and Stationery Store.” First, she explained her reason for establishing the Dong Hai Hospital Design Studio. Hsu spent her childhood in her family hospital, which was collapsed by an earthquake. While cleaning up her home, she was inspired to host an art exhibition at the old hospital, from which she designed the Beaker Cup, the First-Aid storage box, and other creative products. Thus, the sixty-year-old Dong Hai Hospital was transformed into a creative workshop that propels Taiwan’s local design development.
In recent years, Hsu began to interact with the local factories near her workshop in Sanchong. Under the economic policy that moved production into domestic homes in the 70s, miniature home factories appeared in Sanchong that had machines for molding, spot-welding, plating, and lathing. For a creative executor, this is a “Black Cluster” of inexhaustible energy and endless possibilities. Therefore, Hsu formed the Design Alliance of Lane 193, and set up a creative platform for designers of different fields to develop projects, thus starting a renaissance in the local production industry. Furthermore, Hsu also introduced her two exhibitions for the Creative Expo Taiwan, which explored the Taiwanese cultures of sundry goods and tea, and overthrew traditional notions with design.
▲ Au gave his speech entitled “How Design Influences Society.”
Last but not least, the finale speaker was the Macau representative, the up and coming designer, Au-Chon Hin. Au specializes in visual communication with a daring, lively, and innovative style. At age 29, he has already been acclaimed by several international design awards, including the Tokyo Type Directors Club (TDC) Annual Awards, the ADC 97th Annual Awards Bronze Cube, and the iF Product Design Award of Germany, as well as three consecutive wins of the Golden Pin Design Award.
Filled with a burning passion for design, Au discussed three topics of “the public and design,” “festival cities,” and “cultural circles and their responsibilities” in his speech entitled “How Design Influences Society.” With examples of his previous projects, Au hopes to inspire variety in others’ design concepts. Au believes good designs have the power to spur change, to improve the boredom of everyday things, elevate urban aesthetics, and preserve cultural memoirs. He used the identity designs he created for Macau’s old specialty stores, the 16th Macao City Fringe Festival, the HUSH!! Full Music Festival, and the Macao Light Festival 2017 as examples to explain how design can revive the image of urban festivals, attract more citizens, and introduce subcultures to the general community.
▲ A multitude of designers and guests participated in the Salon and formed an enthusiastic, engaging crowd.
▲ Despite their different fields of specialty, all three speakers believed and advocated for the power of design, as well as evoked the active exchange in the Q&A session that followed.
▲ Three seminars of the Golden Pin Salon 2019 came to a close.
As the three seminars of the Golden Pin Salon 2019 came to a close, the calls for entries of awards are also coming to an end. To provide a better registration service for participants, the registration system will be going into maintenance. The deadline for “Golden Pin Design Award” will be extended to July 2, and the deadline for “Golden Pin Concept Design Award” will be on June 25; be sure to make the best of this final chance!
This year, the Golden Pin Design Award will be working with the Macau Fair & Trade Association to provide entry consultation services in Hong Kong and Macau, encouraging designers in the region to utilize this opportunity. For more up-to-date information about the two awards, please be sure to follow the Golden Pin Design Award via its website or various social media platforms.
