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Work may dull designers' edge

Swen Chang shows his award-winning design, a bendable pen that can take digital pictures and display images at the third Lite-On Innovation Awards. Chang, a student from National Taiwan University of Arts, created this pen with his classmate Li Yun-wen and won the student-category gold medal. PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Taiwan's industrial design students are more innovative than their counterparts in Europe and the US, but seem to lose their edge once they find work due to the pressures of the job, the judges of Lite-On Technology Inc's (光寶科技) third annual design awards said yesterday.

To drive home the point, the judges did not award a gold prize in the professional design category for this year's Lite-On Innovation Awards, selecting only two bronze and one silver prize winner.

"Coming from Germany and as chairman for the last two years of the Industrie Forum [IF design awards] jury, which is the largest design contest in Europe, I was amazed to see how high the level of entries was here in Taipei and also to see how far-reaching the concepts of the students were," said Chirstoph Boeninger, director of DesignAfairs.

DesignAfairs is the independent industrial design wing of Siemens AG and Boeninger is the only overseas judge on the 12-member Lite-On awards' judging panel. Boeninger also judges the IF and Red Dot design awards in Germany.

"What struck me is that the students were trying very much not just to bring functional aspects into their designs, but they were also trying to bring some emotional value to their concepts," Boeninger said, "which is different [from] the student concepts you see in the US or Europe."

But deadline pressures and demands from bosses seem to dull that innovative edge.

"In general what the jury observed was that students' entries were more creative and far-reaching than the professional entries, which shows that young professional designers must be under enormous pressure in their professional lives because they just design products for the next generation," Boeninger said.

"Consequently the jury wanted to send a strong statement to the public by not giving a gold medal this year and concentrating instead on one silver and two bronze medals. We also wanted to signal to the public that professional designers should still strive to bring their ideas and visions to reality," he added.

Boeninger criticized the three professional winners for not thinking their designs through properly. A clamshell phone had sharp edges that might hurt the user, a global positioning device had a complicated display and a hi-fi system had three modules that were identical, making it difficult to differentiate their functions.

The students also came in for some criticism.

"The students' marketing skills were weak, and their presentation skills not so great," said jury member David Chen (陳世哲), president of Era Technology (世訊科技). "They had great designs, but they were too nervous when presenting them."

The theme of this year's event was "digital devices for everyday use." The judges received 909 entries from 1,500 students and professionals in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, from which they selected 30 winners. The winners were announced yesterday and awarded prizes ranging from mobile phones to computer equipment.

Four cash prizes of NT$20,000, a further four of NT$50,000 and two NT$100,000 prizes went to the runners-up to the main gold-medal award of NT$200,000, which was shared by two students from the National Taiwan University of Arts.

"I hope this award will encourage other students to take part in competitions," said Swen Chang (張釋文) as he accepted the top prize.

Chang and classmate Li Yun-wen (李允文) designed a pen that can bend at right angles to form three sides of a square. Each segment of the pen is an independent module which can scan text or pictures, take digital pictures and display images, record speech and even act as a mobile phone. The pen comes with a twistable recharging cradle that also has a fingerprint scanner to make sure strangers don't use it. An ink cartridge means users can also write with the pen the old-fashioned way.

"We will continue to give Taiwan's industrial design a stage," said Lite-On's chief technology officer, Paul Lo (駱捷中), at yesterday's event. "We want the awards to represent Taiwan, and to cultivate local talent for international awards. In the future we would also like more overseas participants in the awards."

The theme for next year's Lite-On Innovation Awards will be "the digital home," he added.
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