Taiwan Design Center Unveils Winners of 2007 Taiwan Design Award

Taiwan Design Center (TDC), a national design center, recently announced 12 winners of the 2007 Taiwan Design Award, the third version of the most-important national design contest on the island.

As a country undergoes economic development and sees enhanced affluence, the usual incidental trend that follows is increased emphasis on "design," a quality that is often a luxury and sacrificed in developing countries. In recent years, with the upgraded standard of living in the upmarket and privileged circles in Taiwan, some people believe that the incorporation of design in various aspects of culture, including conspicuous consumption and architecture, reflects improved lifestyles and aesthetic standards in Taiwan.

Also believing in the above and hoping to promote design as a means to, directly or otherwise, encourage local businesses and designers to enhance their abilities in such skills as well as R&D prowess, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) began the first Taiwan Design Award in 2005. This officially-sponsored event will also help to add to the overall substance and richness of the local society, and take the design industry in Taiwan closer to center stage of the design profession globally.

Since its outset, the Taiwan Design Competition has attracted more than 300 submissions yearly vying for the top prize, which apparently shows that the event is considered important by the design industry and its professionals.

The 2007 contest saw the jury select 12 designers or design teams. And the Taiwan Design Award gives out Gold Awards in three categories: product design, visual communication design, and packaging design. In addition, there are two "Special Theme Awards" categories: eco design and universal design.

The entries typically addressed design issues involving food, clothing, household items and transportation. The variety and creativity in the entries impressed both domestic and international judges, who agreed that the pieces clearly reflected the unique nature and identity of Taiwanese culture, TDC said. The entries submitted also showed that the local businesses truly invested ample effort to allow the designers to fully apply their innovative and creative spirit. Every year, TDC said, the design contest receives awe-inspiring entries, showing an endless pool of creative energy in the design profession in Taiwan that could push the island's competitive edge even further ahead.

The Design Contest

Winning prizes in the Taiwan Design Award is the highest honor for the domestic design industry. The awards are given to praise designers, companies, and products that have performed well in Taiwan, and to become a benchmark for the design industry as a whole. The awards also encourage more companies to invest in innovative designs and improve the development of design industry on the island, according to Chen Chao-yih, director general of Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of MOEA.

In addition, noted Steve Chen, Economics Minister of Taiwan, the Taiwan Design Award provides a stage for local industries to showcase their design competence. The ideal behind this awards event is to enable the general public to be more aware of the importance of design as a potential driver of national economic development, as well as a supporter to improve quality on various fronts. By continuing to promote design, the center continued, the award encourages designers to brainstorm to come up with improved ideas and works, pursuing grander achievements year by year. So, the Taiwan Design Award is the best way to promote Taiwan's design capabilities.

New Era of Creativity

As the living standard keeps rising, said Hsu Chih-jen, chairman of TDC, functionality alone can no longer satisfy consumer demands and an aesthetic design is as much a requirement. One remarkable phenomenon that can be observed from the Taiwan Design Award's winning achievements is, according to Hsu, that the awareness of design has gradually risen in all industries and in daily lives. An ordinary rubber bottle cap, for example, contains the concepts of the universal design making it easier to use for all generations; a piece of paper is converted into a marketing display after being processed, the product defines a new impression of itself in terms of transportability, eco-friendliness, and vibrancy both in color and in shape etc. "From this, it can be said that a little originality creates an infinite number of possibilities," Hsu added.

According to Hsu, the Taiwan Design Award represents the government's strong ambition and commitment to more widely promote the awareness for design and its importance to the public. In the long term, he added, Taiwan's creative ability to turn out original designs can be upgraded and developed through more intensive, constructive incorporation of design into mainstream life, which would allow the general public to appreciate the capacity of professional designers to enhance product quality in Taiwan. The TDC, he stressed, would actively be the service platform to integrate local design resources, communicate messages as necessary, as well as help local designers to build recognition, and cultivate creative skills to reach world standards.

Product Design Gold Award--4 Winners

Product: Card Drive U510 Pro

Company: Power Quotient International Co., Ltd.

The credit card-sized flash memory drive is extremely thin (only 3mm) but its memory capacity is as big as 16 gigabyte (GB), making it the thinnest among its counterparts available globally. The card-sized memory drive can be easily put into your wallet or pocket for easy portability and convenience. The thin and flexible housing, despite its deceptively slim dimensions, can withstand impacts up to 7.8 kg.

Product: ANT1106 6dBi Omni-Directional Antenna

Company: ZyXEL Communications Corp.

The modern and simplified styling design of the ANT1106 omni-directional antenna broke the traditional mold and conventional wisdom: shattering the belief that such product has to be rigidly shaped. The stainless-steel base of the antenna features a magnetic design for easy assembly and disassembly, as well as a firm platform for the three poles that are finely polished and powder-coated, which shows a purpose-built sensation. The state-of-the-art designed omni-directional antenna features 360-degree signal-reception that eliminates dead spots when used indoors.

Product: Dolphin Waterproof MP3 Player

Company: NU Inc.

The "NU Dolphin" is the world's first waterproof MP3 player designed to comply with the IPX7 international waterproof standard. The innovative device is tailored for swimmers and water sports enthusiasts. The design concept is to create a portable music device that can be worn by swimmers and other water sport athletes while keeping the impact on their athletic performance to minimum.

The NU design team comes up with this ultra light weight (25g) and ultra compact (a dimension of 60 x 20 x 20mm). Its cylinder-shaped casing features a minimalist exterior with all control buttons located on one side, and the headphone jack on the other side. The earphone employs a special non-woven fabric membrane to keep the speaker vibration plate dry while maintaining a high quality sound output. The earpieces are attached with a soft silicon earplug that fits snugly in the ears. The earplugs not only keep the earphones dry but also prevent the earphones from coming loose during vigorous activities.

Product: PP5400 PDA Phone

Company: Mobinnova Corp.

The PP5400 PDA phone successfully and artfully integrates the elements of a cellphone handset and a personal digital assistant (PDA) while keeping the highly-desirable, overall appearance brimming of elegance and grace. Basically, the PDA phone's overall styling is constituted by a vertical-type handset, on the two sides of which are leather strips to enhance the emotional grabbing feeling. By opening the side-slide 2.8-inch thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) main display with a semi-automated mechanism and turning the device horizontally, you can hold the device by your two palms and use the hidden keyboard and the display as a miniature computer for the PDA functions, including data input, emailing, or working with other operating systems etc.

Packaging Design Gold Award--2 Winners

Product: CHAngrila Organic Green Tea

Company: Green Tea Wun Jia Bao

Designer: Arty Design

Inspired by the legend Shangri-la, the mythical paradise on Earth, the designers expressed the spirit of pursuing a "pristine land." The package, imitating a traditional tealeaf container, is made of paper-fiber woven rattan strips to meet the growing awareness of environmental protection and concept of organic health. The container can be flattened for easy storage and portability, and can be folded into a 3D container easily without the need of adhesives.

Product: WUMILE

Company: Fang Rong

Designer: Tang's Packaging Consultants

Tang's Packaging Consultants' design to package rice by Fan Rong won both the Packaging Design Award and Eco Design Special Award. The creative theme lies in its concept of a "plant with heart," which is communicated by the photos showing four farmers and an old-fashioned rice sieve.

Universal Design Special Award--1 winner

Product: Lemon Run

Designer: U.I. Design Ltd.

The gingko leaf-shaped citri-juicer can be used to hold a slice of lemon to dress foods. The artistically-designed squeezer symbolizes a beautiful and delicate link between natural, healthy foods and natural contours, reminding users to seek a balance between fine food and health.

Visual Communication Design Award--4 Winners

Project: Hotel One

Company: Hotel One

Designer: Huang Wei-han, Fountain Design

Hotel One in Taichung, Taiwan is a new boutique hotel brand operated and managed by the Landis Group. The Fountain Design group spent one year to plan a brand-new brand of hotel chain, taking pains to integrate a series of sophisticated touches that are seen as in demand by upscale guests.

Project: The Blossom Word

Designer: Maxmore Designgroup Co., Ltd.

The notebook is designed with a main appeal to travelers. Each page can act as also a bag to store beautiful memories such as ticket receipts, photos, or other small stuffs for waving different beautiful stories in the future. If you want to take more notes on a single page, just tear open the side flips of the paper bag to get the extended space.

Project: National Palace Museum Digital Archives

Designer: Moulin-Orange Communication Design & Concept Boutique

The project gives those who cannot visit Taiwan in person a virtual tour of the museum. Through the interactive mode designed by the project, viewers can deeply understand treasures in the world-class museum under an Internet environment.

Over the past few decades, digital technology has grown by leaps and bounds, bringing new challenges to the field of traditional museums. How to use this influential aspect in people's lives and important tool in knowledge systems to create cultural knowledge for museums of the future has been a topic heatedly discussed in the past few years. The digitization of collection objects is a cornerstone task in this trend.

Project: Fonso Paper Promotion Poster Series

Company: Fonso Enterprise

Designer: Lee Ken-tsai