Tak Design Foundation

Background

Ever since the start of China’s open door policy in the late 1970s, almost all industries have been keen to recruit the best young design talents for themselves. Hence, many youngsters yearn to become successful designers, through which to unleash their boundless creativity and to actualize their design potential and talents. As a result, numerous design schools, big and small, have been established across the country. It is estimated that nowadays over 1 million students are studying design across China. In this light, a tremendous demand for competent design educators and teachers has occurred. Nevertheless, competent design teachers have been lacking for a prolonged period in China. Besides, in design education, teaching standards and resources are hardly satisfactory, so that when fresh design graduates start to work in companies, they lack the required knowledge, skills, and/or experience to execute their tasks. In the meantime, the companies that hire these fresh design graduates, are seriously lacking in innovation and creativity on their own part, and they also find it difficult to support and nurture the under-equipped fresh design graduates. All of the above have resulted in the slow development and upgrading of numerous companies across China.

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In the light of the above-mentioned problems, China’s national policy has started to promote autonomous innovation strategy, meaning that the government had realized the levels of, and resources for, the autonomous innovation design of the country are insufficient and below international standards. As a result, both central and local governments have put forward varied supporting policies, to nurture China’s indigenous young design talents. To achieve this national policy objective, to invite one single country’s universities or schools to collaborate with local universities is not an optimal option. It is because innovation and design are interwoven with culture. Instead, the ideal scenario could be to establish a global platform through which to collaborate with the world’s top design schools, with a view to nurturing China’s next generations of young design talents in the long run.