The 2019 Taiwan International Student Design Competition (TISDC), now celebrating its 12th year, is one of the largest-scale international student design contests in the world. It is organized by the Ministry of Education and Asia University, and sponsored by iSee Taiwan Foundation, the Sayling Wen Cultural & Educational Foundation, and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). This year’s competition attracted 21,988 works by students at 810 design schools, located in 66 different countries or regions. After the exhaustive preliminary rounds, the final judging panel with members from 20 countries or regions selected the 74 award-winning entries among which 32 are entries by Taiwanese students.

    The theme of this year’s competition was Empathy, in response to the increasing importance of people being in harmony with each other and the environment, especially as we face a rapidly changing world, with an increasing focus on holistic development. Young designers are encouraged to call on their hearts and empathy, as they interpret the relationships between people, and between people and the environment, which have become among a most critical issue in recent years. Many of this year's winners have clearly conveyed related messages, demonstrating their understanding of and reflections on empathy as well as and the social responsibilities that being a professional designer entails.

    The award ceremony for the 2019 Taiwan International Student Design Competition, together with an exhibition of the winning works, will be held on December 6 in the Eslite Performance Hall at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei City. The public is warmly invited to attend.

Seventy-four (74) winning pieces have been chosen to receive one of the following awards: • the Grand Prix, sponsored by the Ministry of Education; the International Design Association special prizes; • gold, silver, and three bronze prizes in each of the categories Product Design, Visual Design, and Digital Animation; • 25 honorable mentions, and 22 international design association special prizes, distributed to entries in these three categories. There were also • a gold, a silver, three bronzes, and six honorable mentions for the ITRI Technique Innovation Award.

    The 2019 Grand Prix went to The Dyslexperience, by Zi Fong Yong and Ng Ai Ling from National University of Singapore. Their winning entry sheds light on the general indifference of the public towards the daily challenges faced by people who have dyslexia. They projected enhanced images onto real books to convey and make viewers realize the kind of sensory experiences dyslexics face, and thereby empathize with them. Their entry fully expresses empathy. It received acclaim from the judges and won its creators the grand prix prize of NTD$ 400,000.

    The Gold Prize winners in the four categories are from Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan.The Gold Prize winner in the Product Design category is Winny Widodo from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. Her work, NODE Furniture Series, is a furniture—inspired by children’s love of rocking horses and elderly people’s love of rocking chairs—is designed for different generations to enjoy using. Winny has created outstanding, space-saving furniture that is quite different from conventional designs.

    The Gold Prize winner in the Visual Design category is Fumio Kajitani from Tokyo University of the Arts, for the entry titled Forms of Love. This expresses the concept that different people each have their own different experiences and interpretations of love. More than 200 people participated in the creating of this experiential work, and both its creative concept and the techniques used drew praise from the judges.

    The Gold Prize in the Digital Animation category went to The Sea Within The Room, a work by Ho Yun-Zhen, Liu Ya-Ching, and Hsueh Fang-Yi from National Taiwan University of Arts. Their work depicts the story of a sexual assault victim's "freeze responses". The victim of an assault was so scared that she went blank and could not react or fight back. The calm, highly restrained, and unexaggerated storytelling style and techniques impressed the judges.

The Gold Prize in the Brand Specified category is shared by Chen Zhi-Fan from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and Hu Hui-Ping and Chang Wei-Chun from Ming Chi University of Technology. Their entry, AI Oculur, is a form of firefighting equipment that integrates sensors into firefighters’ masks and fire hose nozzles. It enhances firefighting efficiency and at the same time reduces the risks that firefighters face at work. These highly practical features won the designers the gold prize in the ITRI Technique Innovation Award.

The list of all the award winners has been released and it can be viewed on the MOE website (https://depart.moe.edu.tw/ed2200/) and the TISDC (www.tisdc.org) website. The general public is welcome to attend the award ceremony on December 6, and there will also be a further opportunity to enjoy some of the work of these international student designers, at an exhibition of their excellent designs pieces which will be held in the National Library of Public Information in Taichung, from December 3 to December 15.