Top designers urge curriculum reform
Mainland students are getting better, awards event told
The city's top designers called yesterday for school curriculum reform and greater effort by students in the face of the rising competence of mainland design students.
Winners of the Ten Outstanding Designers Awards, held for the first time by the Hong Kong Communication Art Centre, gave advice to local students at the Art and Design Festival at the Convention and Exhibition Centre.
'Neither the quantity nor quality of local designers is meeting the market demand,' interior designer Steve Leung told a large crowd of design students. 'After seeing your works, I think you have to double your effort. The works of mainland students nowadays are not any less than those of their Hong Kong counterparts.'
Product designer Lo Kai-yin, the only female winner of the award, advised the students to learn more history and culture in addition to design techniques.
'I did not have any school training in designing. Instead, I studied European history,' she said. 'Cultural knowledge has an impact on the depth of your designs.'
Curriculum reform, needed for training the next generation of designers, should not just involve university students, said product designer Alan Yip Chi-wing.
'Even when we succeed in reforming university programmes, we still need to worry about the intake - will the secondary students be creative enough to join these programmes? Currently, designing has not been incorporated in secondary education,' he said.
Hong Kong design students still held the edge of being more internationalised than their mainland counterparts, the designers said.
The 10 winners are John Chan (interior), Barney Cheng Siu-leung (fashion), Joseph Fung (architectural and interior), Barrie Ho Chow-lai (interior), Kenneth Ko (interior), Freeman Lau Siu-hong (graphic), Steve Leung (interior), Lo Kai-yin (product), William Tang Tat-chi (fashion), and Alan Yip Chi-wing (product).
