Reflecting on Design Promotion in Taiwan

Design Promotion in Taiwan began in 1967 when China Industrial Designers Association was founded in December. Later the Taiwan Design Promotion Center was founded in 1979. However, those campaigns remained rather closed activities among design professionals until very recently. The fever for design sprouted after 90's, when some of the biggest manufacturers in Taiwan started to do branding, hoping to transform from OEM to ODM, and ultimately establish their own brand. Only few companies survived the fierce branding competition. DBTEL and many other companies failed, Formosa Automobile stumbled and is still struggling.

With the press fussing over the success of branding by consumer electronics manufacturers such as ACER, BENQ, ASUS, design profession received unprecedented attention in the new millennium. Taiwan Design Center was founded in 2003. Suddenly everyone believe design to be the panacea to Taiwan's marginalized and stagnant economy. Is that so? To survive branding competition, setting up a marketing or design team is not even the beginning. The capability of risk-management, fully support and thorough change of the mindset from CEO to every level of employers, and a considerable amount of capitals and resources can only buy a company the ticket to enter the interenational branding arena, not a least guarantee to survive. Constant political conflicts and restrictions across Taiwan Strait, long-term negligence of art education, piracy, the lack of cooperation between companies and strategy in state-run organizations can further increase the risk and uncertainty.