Ministry of Education (MOE) held an exhibition for the students of Scholarship Program for Overseas Study in Arts and Design (SPOSAD) at Building M4B of Taipei Huashan 1914 Creative Park on October 16 Wednesday. The exhibition demonstrates the achievements of 19 students, each of whom was sent for overseas study at institutes or companies in different countries like USA, UK, German, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In the press conference, Minister Wen-Chung Pan talked with the students and invited them to share what they have learned in such cross-cultural environments. Mr. Jean-François Casabonne-Masonnave, the new director of Bureau Français de Taipei and Ms Moïra MARGUIN, the head of Cinema Animation Department at Gobelins, L'école de L'image, and other representatives from the industries also joined the press conference. The 5-day exhibition was open to the public from October 16 to 20. It went well and received positive reply from teachers and students in domestic universities.

“We are glad and proud of the students, who show their enthusiasm in research and share in confidence their experiences in institutes and internship companies,” Minister Pan said in the media interview. He pointed out that Taiwan was ranked the 4^th place as Super Innovators in the latest Global Competitiveness Report published by Geneva-based World Economic Forum. The government should especially give credits to those talents in arts and design. SPOSAD is one of MOE’s important projects to nurture more innovation talents. It has been carried out for over 10 years and there are now 284 students returning from abroad. The project is now inclusive of 5 groups, including Digital Media, Visual Communication Design, Product Design, Architecture and Landscape Design, and the newly established Fashion Design. MOE takes it as a great responsibility to invest and nurture Taiwan talents, hoping that the students could use their abilities in arts and design to reverse Taiwan and the world and further turn a new leaf for the development on this land.

Digital Media

An Intern at Illumination Mac Guff

Jo-Ying Lee, a student of National Taiwan University of Arts, receives the SPODAD scholarship and attends Gobelins, L'école de L'image, which is ranked No.1 among European Animation Schools. In her time abroad, with her impressive portfolio, she applied and successfully earned an internship at Illumination Mac Guff. Illumination Mac Guff is an animation company based in Paris France. The company produces famous animation movies like the series of Despicable Me and Millions. By joining the pipeline of animation movies, Lee improved her own animation by exchange opinions among animators. She found in France, there is no hierarchy among senior and junior animators. Everyone could be one’s teacher and the vision of a work is actually broadened by interpersonal relations. Now she is in the team producing Millions 2. By learning skills and attitude at the same time, she is on her way to become an animator in France.

Visual Communication Design

Design x Medical Treatment to Make a Better World

Swinburne University is one of the most famous design schools in Australia. When in school, Chiao-Yu Chang not only skilled in graphic design but also joined Design Bureau, a course based on industry-academy cooperation. By engaging herself in a real-life situation, she talked with the clients in person and proposed design solutions. In one case, she found the inconvenience of the handicapped in life and strived to make a wheel chair designed on paper into a real product. The project impressed her client and also earned herself an 8-month internship in Cabrini, a company in Australia. She was assigned to a team developing the 2^nd generation of a health-care app interface for pregnant women. Chang was just the example of design by Projects. She upgraded herself from a graphic designer to a project leader, coordinating with engineers in materials, mechanics and program. In the past year, she expanded her field into the medical area. What once had frustrated her became the sources moving her forward. The employer was impressed with her excellence and even wrote a recommendation letter for her. Now returning to Taiwan, Chang is already recruited into an American advertisement company.

Product Design

The Journey on Realizing the Design Dream

Tsai-Chen Ho, a cheerful girl wrote down the goal to become a product designer in her high school homework at Age 13. Her family doesn’t understand her but Ho shows her outstanding design capacity and wins the SPOSAD scholarship to study at the Delft University of Technology (TUD), Netherland for one year. Almost each international student, including Ho, has to experience the feeling of homesick. Ho especially misses her 90-year-old grandpa. This kind of emotion drives her to create ”Hello Hello”, a device that is friendly to the elder users and the environment. She utilizes an old smartphone to connect a cardboard-made device with physical buttons that provides a user-friendly and familiar tool for the elders to communicate with others. In addition, the device brings a new product life to the unwanted smartphones. After this year's study in Netherland, Ho decides to continue her professional development and complete her Master's degree at TUD. Now her design dream in childhood is coming true.

For more information about Scholarship Program for Overseas Study in Arts and Design, please go on the website (https://www.media.yuntech.edu.tw/) or its fan’s page on Facebook.