Slightly puzzled by the categorization of the Golden Pin Design Award (金點設計獎) to include product, packaging, interior and visual communication designs from specifically “Chinese-speaking” countries and special administrative regions, I didn’t quite know what to expect at last Thursday’s awards ceremony.
The Web site had stated that “Chinese-speaking consumers demand products and designs tailored to their needs and desires.” As someone who is not 100 percent Han Chinese and grew up in multilingual environments in several Asian countries, I couldn’t help but feel a little excluded. In an era where more and more young people are resisting being labeled by their ethnicity or nationality, shouldn’t art and design competitions be trying to universalize to reflect this sentiment rather than compartmentalize?
THAI FOOD AND RED CARPETS
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
I was anxious to ask these questions to Chen Wen-lung (陳文龍), the CEO of the Taiwan Design Center and organizer of the awards ceremony.
Prior to the red carpet event at Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), I was ushered into Not Just Library (不只是圖書館), an academic-chic space on the second floor of the Taiwan Design Museum (台灣設計館) with shelves containing books made for photography backgrounds rather than actual reading.
Chen sat calm and collected on a sofa in the main reading room, wearing a black scarf — it was cold indoors. On the other side of the room, a lady holding a sign to warn me when I had five minutes left to interview Chen, watched us nonchalantly.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
Despite the slightly hyped-up nature of the event — is a red carpet really necessary for someone who designed the packaging for a box of tea? — Chen had an air of authenticity, which was accompanied by a pleasant smile.
As if prepared to answer such questions, Chen explained the rationale behind Golden Pin’s “Chinese-speaking” categorization with the most appropriate analogy — food.
“Thai food is delicious, isn’t it?” he asked.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
Immediately, I started thinking of pad thai and green curry.
“But if I ate it every day, I would get sick of it because it is not what I’m used to,” Chen said.
That was probably not the best example for me since I am part Thai, but I understood what Chen meant. After three days of German sausages, mashed potatoes and lagers at Oktoberfest two years ago, my stomach was suffering from intense cravings for rice, stir-fried vegetables and green tea. It’s not that Chen and I are against eating certain types of cuisines — rather, the explanation is as simple as every culture having its own staple food, whether it is rice, noodles or potatoes (or lagers). And whether we care to admit it or not, such preferences are innately influenced by our environment as well as genetics.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
FOLLOW THE FAD
As I chewed on those thoughts, Chen added that these preferences expanded to having different tastes in art and design.
Being a product designer involves having some basic knowledge of sociology and a curiosity to seek out explanations for social behavior — which Chen evidently possesses.
“Trends help us understand a particular culture and its people at a particular moment of time,” he said. “Products are invented to reflect such trends — they go through their own historical processes and stages of evolution.”
Chen believes that we can learn more about other cultures through understanding their products. The scooter, he says, is a product that suits the Taiwanese lifestyle well — one which convenience is of utmost importance in city dwellers’ harried lives. At the same time, it reflects the more laid-back Taiwanese mentality of wanting to escape to the mountains for a weekend and having a scooter would help with navigating the beaten tracks.
“If a certain product does well in Taiwan or China, then it becomes a trend,” says Chen. “It’s only after something becomes a trend that it has potential to spread to other countries.”
Like a true 90s child, Tamagotchi pets and Hello Kitty knick-knacks were the first things that came to mind — products like these ushered in the kawaii fad which spurned the worldwide interest in Japan’s “cute culture.” It all boils down to product dissemination being a facilitator of idea dissemination. Or as Chen says, “this is precisely how we can learn from other cultures since products come with ideas.”
Rather than marketing Golden Pin as something distinctly for the “Chinese-speaking” world, what’s more fascinating is how these products and their accompanying ideas have both specific and universal appeal. Perhaps Golden Pin might consider running with a theme like that next season.
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