Other than doing their assigned work, designers voluntarily spend their time to take part in design competitions. Winning competitions constitutes an important part of their purpose, but they also aim to keep up motivation and broaden their experience through joining competitions, hoping to become more skilled designers. I would like to use this column to talk about a design competition I participated in with my colleagues in Digital Strategy Department and CMFG Department. Set in Tokyo in 2052, this competition assigned the participants to design apparel products that can help people live comfortably under harsh conditions brought by global warming such as incessant rainfalls. Let me explain what came to my mind while I was working on this challenging task.

1.Rethinking the design process

When starting a design process, it’s important to examine the context of a given design theme from a wide perspective and develop a viable concept before working on creating tangible forms. We proposed a solution to an environmental crisis where increased rainfalls raise water levels and leave the ground flooded as a result. Our focus was to propose a product design that should respond to this kind of crisis. I think this was an inspiring initiative for designers as it was different from business-as-usual approaches such as improving the design for existing products like umbrellas.

It’s also important to introduce such a way of thinking when we engage in ordinary design projects. But in many cases, we are given so many requirements by our clients that we have to spend much time on dealing with them and have difficulties coming up with truly innovative ideas. That’s why we make use of design competitions as a training session for carrying out a design process starting from a fundamental concept.

2.Expanding design areas through inter-disciplinary design

In this competition, CMFG designers were involved in fashion design and product designers were assigned to environmental design. Although this was a competition for apparel products, we employed design methods often used in the field of environment or architecture to represent our overall view of the world.

In their daily business assignments, product designers and CMFG designers are mostly responsible for designs of their own specialized fields. However, as designers are required to present holistic views regarding their design targets rather than simply working out specific designs, they can take advantage of design competitions to cultivate their mindset so they will expand their design areas and take on new challenges in different fields.

3.Improving design skills

We employed multiple design tools for this competition. We used Adobe XD for making a story board. We also used CLO for presenting images of clothing, Grasshopper for drawing buildings, and Unreal Engine for delineating shadings for humans and the whole picture. We also made use of the procedural method and automatic generation to effectively make CG rendering images without spending too much time on the process. I believe design competitions can provide designers with useful ways of improving their skills.

That’s all for my explanation about how designers can gain experience and improve their skills from joining a design competition. I would appreciate it if designers and design students could draw lessons from my experience to improve their own skills and motivations.

Chiang Chihlin

Digital Experience Design Dept.

Unit Leader