Not just drawing and painting
The last few years have seen rapid growth for creative and cultural industries in Taiwan, and all sectors of the economy are paying increasing attention to creativity and design. There has been a parallel shift in the status enjoyed by departments of design on the preference lists filled out by students taking university entrance exams.
In its days as a junior college for home economics, Shih Chien was dismissively called a "finishing school for future brides," and most of the students who studied fashion and design did so only because their scores were not high enough to test into the departments and schools they genuinely wanted. But today Shih Chien is a full-fledged university and a place in its school of design is much sought after. There are even some cases of students with very high exam scores who put the College of Design at the top of their preference lists.
Kuan Cheng-neng says it has long been common overseas for design to be a respected field. In the UK there is the Royal College of Art, while at highly rated Stanford University in the US, design serves as a platform to integrate the humanities, technology and commerce. In Taiwan, design used to be relegated to vocational schools. Now industry is beginning to take it more seriously, but still, from a certain point of view, this is only because people have realized it can be a moneyspinner. This bottom-line way of thinking remains different from the role played by design in other countries, where it is integrated into daily life.
In Taiwanese culture, there remain a lot of misunderstandings about design as an academic major.
Kuan says that a lot of parents think design just means drawing or painting, and they let their kids go into the department because the kids have always loved fine arts. Then there are parents who go by the "process of elimination." Their child is bad at math, English, science, and the humanities, so he or she might as well study design! On the other hand, if gifted children opt to study design, people are likely to say they are "wasting their talent" and that design is "not a serious profession."
Many parents are therefore amazed to find that after their children enter the College of Design, they end up coming home late every night and have to go into the workshop even on the weekends. It is not unusual for parents to think their children are instead up to no good: "Who do you think you are fooling?! This is Shih Chien we're talking about here!"
"It has always been difficult for us to explain or prove to society that design is a legitimate profession, and that it can also be 'the right thing,'" says Kuan Cheng-neng. As an illustration of what he means, Kuan points to the case of director Ang Lee. Lee's father, a middle-school principal, thought that his son's choice to study film in university was an embarrassment to the family. It was only after Lee had won numerous international awards that his dad finally understood that it was perfectly OK. But now that there are precedents like film director Ang Lee, Chang Yi (famous for Liuli Gong Fang glass arts), and Hsiao Ching-yang (well-known for album cover design), Kuan is convinced that people will be increasingly accepting of such choices.
Innovative and mature works created by students studying industrial design at Shih Chien University made a splash at last year's SaloneSatellite furniture show in Milan.