Asian Education and Matt Damon? Oh My!

This weekend kicked off the Business of Design Week. An innaugaral event was held at PolyU for Design Educators. This event also marked the debut of the first design piece in Chinese that I have ever art directed. The image on the left is an early version of a student flyer that was placed at the registration table. Yeah, it's only a student flyer, but professional design instructors from Asia, Europe and the US all had a glance at it! I'll admit that it's a little unnerving to think all those PhDs and pros with decades of experience took a look at this piece.

The Design Educators conference was very interesting and sparked a lot of thoughts. I missed the morning session with the Asian educators from Korea, Japan and China. But I made it to the Western portion in the afternoon with an Australian, German and several American speakers. It was interesting to get the Western POV of Asian design which everyone acknowledges is just starting to come onto its own in the modern age. Asian design is emerging from its traditional past and making its way into the modern age with a style that can be elegant, functional and distincly Eastern.

Other ideas I kept hearing included social responsibility and sustainability. These concepts are just barely getting traction in the West and our Western counterparts were really trying to instill this to the Eastern design educators. I hope that the educators took this to heart. I feel these are crtical global concepts that are needed for the world's most populous region as their economies and consumption continues to explode.

Overall everyone felt that it was an exciting time for Asian design. New and wonderful ideas are emerging and educators can have an enormous role in helping shape that exciting future. After all design and media has an enormous hand in influencing and augmenting public attitudes. That's why I was very dissapointed to read a New York Times article about 2 anti-Chinese and anti-Korean comic books that have emerged as bestsellers in Japan. One of the things that can impede or damage Asia's exciting growth and future are the insecurities and fear that can result in misguided racism and nationalism. As China and Korea emerge to challenge Japan's Asian supremacy, there is a great danger of moving back to the Asia vs. Japan mentality that culminated in the horrors of WWII. I hope Asians are smarter than that.

After the conference I met some friends for a very late night out. Again, I lucked out and got into a very full club without paying the cover and met all sorts of cool people. I met a German guy who bore a striking resemblance to Matt Damon. We got along swell and ended up waiting for the MTR together at 6am, but I did detect a little competitve streak when it came to the subject of women ;). I might meet him for a bite later this week before he heads back to Shanghai, which he told me feels more like home than Germany. Going head-to-head with a German Matt Damon in Hong Kong... who'da thunk it!