- Professor Zhang Naiyan, Department of Industrial Design, Beijing Institute of Technology
-- Prof. Wang Xing, School of Management, Beijing Institute of Technology
Paper Abstract:
This paper evaluates and looks forward to the industrial design education in China's mainland, and points out how to plan and divide it from the four aspects of preschool design education, design education in primary and secondary schools, design education in professional schools, and design education in social practice. In order to improve the quality of the nation’s culture, art, and art design, and to raise the level of industrial design in China in an all-round way to meet the development of industrial production after reform and opening up. At the same time, this article proposes several characteristics, capabilities and conditions that should be possessed by an outstanding industrial designer: such as a keen sense of ability, the desire to explore and explore the desire and ability, the ability to invent, the aesthetics of the product Appreciation ability, ability to express design ideas, ability to predict the market, become a bridge between manufacturers and consumers, possess comprehensive professional intelligence, etc., to provide a clear understanding of industrial design education for industrial designers The main points of the content indicate the direction.
At present, the history of design education in mainland China is only a short period of ten years. It can be said that our industrial design business has just begun. With the comprehensive and in-depth implementation of the Mainland's reform and opening-up policy, our country's industry is facing a situation of great development and soaring. The industrial design business that followed will also face new challenges. Therefore, the popularity of design education and the work of improvement are particularly pressing.
Design education can be roughly divided into pre-school design education, design education in primary and secondary schools, design education in professional schools, and design education in social practice.
I. Preschool design education
The perception of preschool children is in the stage of enlightenment. From an aesthetic point of view, design education can best exert children’s imagination and creativity, and can cultivate children’s keen observation and sensibility, and at the same time, it can help vent their richness. The best way to lively emotions. At this stage, children’s parents and nursery or kindergarten teachers should induce them to develop their perceptions of beauty by observing the ever-changing nature, such as observations of stars, rainbows, clouds and flowers, trees, rocks, and insects. As well as the unique perception of each beauty, shape, color, and line, as well as appropriate teaching aids, basic modeling activities in design education, such as "planar activities" and "three-dimensional activities". "Plane activities" refers to painting, paper cutting, patterns, cloth stickers, and the like. “Three-dimensional activities†refers to clay sculptures, stacking papers, and making all kinds of (mud, wood, paper) models. Through these design and production activities, children can gradually identify the topics they have created and cultivate their artistic tastes. And its basic ability to design and shape things. For children's enlightenment teachers, we must pay special attention to children who have special sensibility and image thinking skills for the content of aesthetic education in order to cultivate them in a special way.
II. Elementary and secondary school design education
At present, there are art classes in general middle schools. However, from the perspective of design education, the content should not be merely painting and sketching, but should include arts and crafts and craftsmanship. As there are fewer classes for aesthetic education in primary and secondary schools, we must organize students to participate in extracurricular tutoring groups. Teachers who have received professional training in design will intensify counseling for some good seedlings who seem to have hope to become artists and designers. It can be cultivated and played during primary and secondary schools. Although it is still in the stage of enlightenment, this stage of aesthetic education often plays an invaluable role. The esthetic education curriculum's inspiration to the soul and the wisdom of elementary and middle school students will promote their balanced development in sensuality and rationality.
From the introduction of some information, we can see that some countries with more advanced industrial design have paid great attention to restarting the design education. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China had formulated a teaching plan for aesthetic education textbooks for elementary and middle schools as early as the 1950s. Its content includes not only painting, clay sculptures, and patterns, but also important handicraft modeling activities such as drawing, paper folding, bamboo woodworking, and metalworking. With the development of industrial design in Japan, Japan’s design education in primary and secondary schools is also deepening. From the revised teaching plan in 1963, it can be seen that its design education is divided into three parts: basic exercises (including basic painting's modeling ability, color composition, plane composition and three-dimensional structure), decoration and visual communication. They also involve five fields: painting, sculpture, design, production, and appreciation. The U.S. is also a country that pays special attention to design education in primary and secondary schools. It emphasizes that children should be started and new education campaigns should be initiated. It is necessary to create a human-centered living environment. In this open environment, everyone should be based on himself. The interest to learn, to exert its imagination and creativity. Since the 1960s, the United Kingdom has also begun to attach importance to the design education in primary and secondary schools, and has stipulated that only those students who have attained Grade A in the secondary school art and design classes are eligible to apply for art or designing colleges. Germany is the birthplace of Bauhaus and is a pioneer in modern design education. Of course, it also attaches special importance to the production process technology training for primary and middle school students, and pays attention to the study of teaching materials and processing methods. In Italy today, there are 208 vocational and art secondary schools and design colleges according to the statistics on educational activities reported in the country from 1971 to 1973. France has always put more emphasis on design education, requiring primary and secondary school teachers to be those who have received professional design education. In recent years, courses on design history have also been added. Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark have made industrial design courses compulsory.
III. Design Education in Professional Colleges
According to statistics, there are only a dozen colleges and universities with industrial design departments in China ten years ago. At present, there are four to fifty institutes that have set up industrial design departments and are capable of setting up industrial design departments. However, most of the industrial design education departments that they run are derived from the professions related to industrial design. Industrial design majors are also derived from the professional arts and crafts. The industrial design majors of science and engineering universities are mostly built on the basis of architecture or mechanical specialty. Therefore, the teaching of industrial design in these two types of colleges has more or less the original birthmark. This “mark of the birthmark†is not so much a manifestation of their respective different characteristics, but rather it shows precisely the flaws and deficiencies in design education. Because industrial design is a highly integrated edge discipline, design itself needs to consider numerous and complex factors. In the words of the British Industrial Design Master Ca Yinshi: "Industrial design is a creative act that adapts to human needs, harmonizes the environment, satisfies people's needs, and exerts the product's function and value." Therefore, in design education, technology and technology must be integrated. The essence of the humanities. Industrial design is the design of a product based on people, and the product is attributed to people - making it a human item. Therefore, we should cultivate such an industrial designer: he not only has the aesthetic taste of the artist, but also has a rigorous working attitude of scientists and engineers, and at the same time he is the operator who masters market orientation, promotes enterprise production, and guides consumption. Only then can it be called a good industrial designer.
IV. Design Education in Social Practice
Since China's industrial design is in its infancy, some colleges have set up industrial design majors, but their teaching resources are not sufficient, and their teaching experience is limited. It is impossible for all the industrial designers trained by them to be excellent talents. At the same time, in terms of society’s demand for industrial designers, students graduating each year are far from meeting the needs of companies. In this situation of supply and demand inconsistency, companies have naturally emerged many industrial designers that have dislocated in practice. Although these designers have not received formal industrial design professional education, they have been trained in their work. And self-taught. According to the survey, there are a large number of such designers. They mainly come from two aspects: some students who graduated from other majors (such as architecture, mechanical manufacturing, drawing, or arts and crafts) graduated from practical and self-study due to their work needs. stand up. Although they have not studied systematically in industrial design, they have a close relationship with the industrial design profession. They generally have high artistic accomplishment, rich creativity and styling performance, plus they have With rich practical experience and a certain theoretical level, the knowledge and techniques of the general industrial design profession will soon be mastered. Others are woodworkers, model workers, fitters, and other workers who have many years of work experience. They have explored many years of work practices and become self-taught to become industrial designers. They have considerable practical experience in the design of certain specific projects. Even though there are inventions and creations in the function and structure of products, there is still a lack of morphological design, modeling processing and design theory.
From the teaching practice or from the production of the enterprise, we often find such a situation: whether it is an industrial designer who has been diverted from other professions halfway or a self-taught designer in practice, generally speaking, the quality is rather biased and insufficient. comprehensive. They more or less lack the multifaceted traits, capabilities and conditions that a true, successful designer should possess.
The characteristics, capabilities, and conditions that a successful designer should possess should be as follows:
1. Strong sensibility: The changes in the modern social environment are accelerating. A designer must train himself to observe the surrounding environment with a keen keen sense and think about everything in a changing life. In this way, he will continue to find that from a design point of view, there are still areas around us that are not yet able to To achieve the kind of improvement people expect, this shows the designer's unique ability to feel. The formation of this kind of ability, although it has inherent factors, but mainly depends on the cultivation of the acquired.
2. Exploring and pursuing the source of desire and ability: As a designer, everything around him can lead his attention and curiosity. He always looks, asks, and thinks more. He likes to search for the bottom and explore things. Inner mystery. He can often trace the source through a very insignificant trivial matter, use the basic principle of a certain thing to be interpreted as a far-reaching, creative theorem or initiate a new concept, and can be applied in practice.
3. The ability of invention and creation: A designer can learn all the theoretical knowledge from books in the process of learning, or cultivate and enrich from the design of imitating others.