A field without a formalized body of history and a community of academic historians could hardly be called a profession.－Katherine McCoy (2005, p. 8)
1. Introduction
Design or advertising activities normally evolve with the development of the social economy. In early days when there was no professional education in design, people tended to resort to people who knew about art and painting to produce design. Therefore, “graphic” related subjects already existed in the early art education, and Taiwanese art was originated from the art and craft education in the Japanese colonial period. The art and craft education in that period of time was already implemented in the direction of developing art education, and there were plenty of young painters devoted themselves to art education. Thus, in the middle of the colonial period, the art education started to flourish in Taiwan.
According to Yen (2000), significant design activities sprouted in the colonial period and presumed that design related activities started from the Japanese colonial period. Though there were no art schools in that period of time, plenty of outstanding young artists already had their stages to perform under the Japanese rule. These artists later became the pioneers of local Taiwanese artists after Taiwan ’s restoration to the Chinese government. From literatures and references we also had a picture that these pioneers of Taiwanese art also worked as artistic designers and commercial designers in that period of time. Due to the fact that the concept of “design” did not actually exist in Taiwan , many design works were taken by painters, e.g. Ishikawa Kinnichiro and Yan Yue Tao Fu.
In early days posters, packaging, newspaper ads, trademarks, catalogs or even the commercial constructions and costume drawing, the practical designed objects demanded in the market, were produced by people with basic art backgrounds who most of the time graduated from general colleges. In 1947, Taiwan Provincial Normal College established the painting and handwork department and recruited teachers from Ishikawa Kinnichiro’s students. The original mission of “painting and handwork” department was to prepare the middle school art teachers, but later the graduates of the department became the main force of faculty in university of art department. Ishikawa’s student, Chen Hui-Kun once taught the course “patterns” in the department, and that was a few of design related courses offered in the painting and handwork department. There were plenty of the first group of graduates posing significant impacts on the design education in Taiwan, e.g. Shih Tsue-Feng, Kao Ching-Chung, Yiu Hsiang-Chi, Sung Chih-Hsiung and so on, among which Shih Tsue-Feng served as the head of the art and craft department in National Arts College for 8 years since 1964 and later the head of the art department in Chinese Culture College for 5 years, posing great influence on the early design education. Kao Ching-Chung taught in the industrial design department in Taipei College of Technology. Yiu Hsiang-Chi taught in National Arts College and Sung Shih-Hsiung worked in the relevant industry of advertising. Those were the pioneers of design educators in Taiwan after colonial age.
Design-related contents already appeared in the field of drawing, painting and handcrafts, for example geometric paintings, coloring, patterns, crafts and so on. Therefore, in the research on the origin of the Taiwanese design, it is once again proved that the design education in Taiwan was originated from art education, and a part of it came from the “drawing, painting and handicraft” subjects in the Japanese colonial period. Such assumption is similar to the theory that the design education in the west comes from the field of art. As McCoy mentioned that design discipline has been slowly moving in art schools and university art department, it has been decades’ development and finally realized that design is not simply a commercial application of fine arts ideas and processes (McCoy, 2005). Therefore, in researching the origin of design education, I shall trace the track of the history in the “drawing, painting and handicraft” subjects in early days in Taiwan.
Looking back at the development of design education in Taiwan, it has long merely been a few courses offered in the art department but only caught people’s eyes in the 1960s. In the early 1960s, a number of local TV stations, advertising agencies and news agencies were established one after another. The market then demanded a large quantity of talent of art, illustration or design backgrounds; thus the art and craft department in schools became the cradle of incubating design talent. As Frascard addressed (2001) that “design exists because there are needs to meet, tasks to undertake, goods to sell, people to train, objects of many sorts to help…(p. 15),” Frascard clearly explained what design was to meet human needs, wishes and desires. In the early 1960s social and economic movement made the market, especially in advertising industry, the market need forced the educators in art department to face the problems of design education. Once American graphic design professor Steven Heller called “Advertising: the mother of graphic design (Weill, 2003, p. 134).” Owing to the reason that the design curricula in early days emphasized more on the field of art with little interest in applied design, it was obvious that the education in the art department didn’t meet the requirement of being a professional design practitioner.
As I review the references conflicts, debates and critics came from both academic and industry, at the same time, owing to the termination of American Aid, the United Nations as well as the government defined developing industry as the main mission and expanding exports. Later the government promulgated “Statute for the Encouragement of Investment”, and in the process of rapid industrialization, promoting the handicraft industry in the private sector was another mission. The “living room factories” revealed the era of the gradual boosting economy in Taiwan. The Taiwan government and private societies in the 1960s invested quite a lot of efforts in the design industry. As I am to investigate the history of design education in Taiwan and found very few of publications or documents discussed the design education in formal school system. How design was taught in the university art departments or art schools? And who were the qualified professionals to incubate our young designers during the adolescence age? The history of design education in Taiwan still remains mysteries for us to unfold, especially in the 1960s.
2. Statement of research problems
The word “design” did not exist in that period of time, and all the drawn patterns or promotional materials were made by capable painters, and that was the reason why all the design activities or design courses were taught in arts departments only. Taiwan Normal College (later became National Taiwan Normal University in 1968) played a very important role in terms of promoting arts. However, general colleges or normal universities were established for incubating art teachers, whose expertise were not able to practice the requirement in the design or advertising industry. In 1957, the art and craft department in National Arts College (a 5-year curriculum) and Private Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School were established, and since then the design education in Taiwan had entered to the field of art and craft. The 3-year art and craft curriculum in National Arts College was later established in 1962 and the arts department of Chinese Culture College in 1963, which was the incubating period of Taiwan ’s design education.
In that period of time, those schools began to add graphic design, commercial design and three-dimension design to replace the existing “pattern” course, and National Arts College further divided the second year curriculum into “product design section” and “adornment design section.” A transforming society required many people of design backgrounds to join design and advertising industry’s work force, and schools, institutes echoed their demands to develop design curriculum to prepare students meet their requirements. And here I would like to raise my question－how were these courses taught? What was the core knowledge introduced in the early stage of design education? Who were the persons to teach design in the 1960s?
As I tracked back the references, and found that design courses were taught by the persons came from: 1) graduates of Taipei Normal College in the Japanese colonial period or students of other Japanese painters (such as: Ishikawa Kinnichiro), 2) artists once studied abroad in Japan and 3) some Chinese painters retreating to Taiwan with the Chinese national government. Some of these Chinese exiled artists were students of Hsu Bei-Hong of Peking Arts College, students of Liu Hai-Su of Shanghai Arts College and graduates of Hangzhou Arts College. After the 1950s, due to the political shift, artists from mainland China gradually had in hand the art education in Taiwan, giving the legitimacy of the entire art education to Chinese ink painting, and such atmosphere indirectly affected the development of the design education. It calls my attention and curiosity how design could be taught in such situation?
The art and craft education in colleges and universities faced the problem of transformation in the 1960s. The general public tended to confuse “design” with “art”, and the society often called the people doing design “craft artisan” and have been labeling the name since then. Such phenomenon was due to the reason that most teachers in art and craft programs or departments were painters in early days, so design and painting easily confused people with their differences. We can see from literatures in the past that many people practicing design raised blistering criticism on such phenomenon. Peng(1980) pointed out that Commercial design was regarded as a brand-new walk of life and was at the top priority of design students’ choice of career. However, the design education in that period of time was still at this initial stage of development, plus there were no former experiences to follow, so everything had to be done from the very beginning. People in charge of design education had only very vague idea of conducting design education, resulting in that today we still stay with “insufficient facilities”, “too many redundant teachers” and “too formalized system” and even occupy students’ valuable time by giving them courses unrelated to design(Peng, 1980). I would like to raise my second questions that how are the talent incubating by such design education capable of working in this modern “top career?” Was it really like Peng’s statement that design education was well-facilitated to incubate our young designers?
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