Due to the impact of COVID-19, Kyoto City University of Arts has decided to hold the first semester of 2020 classes remotely. The following is an introduction to the practical classes at the Department of Product Design under these circumstances. Since the year before last, the Product Design major has changed the curriculum of its practical classes to set their own goals and control the curriculum proactively. Specifically, we have shifted from the traditional approach of building up from basics to specialties to “elective assignments” where students can freely choose their assignments for each half year. Students in the second to the fourth year of the program will participate in […]

The Department of Art and Design at Onomichi City University is a relatively small art university with about 50 students in Year 1 and 15 faculty members, and 3 assistants in each course. There are three courses: Japanese painting, Oil painting, and Design, and students in each course can receive highly specialized guidance from faculty members. One of the features of our department’s art education is that all Year 1 students experience all the three courses of practical training in the first year through the basic modeling subjects to cultivate basic modeling skills. Students will select the course in the Year 2 based on their experience and aptitude. Compared to […]

　The first semester of the 2020 school year began with compliance to COVID-19 measures. Regular face-to-face lessons were suspended, which led to a major challenge of how to give concrete form to art education acquired through physical experience. It was an opportunity to rethink our fundamental relationship with art, which we usually take for granted. For the Year 1 and 2 students, in particular, it is essential to have a “place” where they can understand and acquire basic skills through dialogue with their teachers to have a sense of the distance from their subjects while struggling with the materials and confirming the production process. It was the first time for […]

Kagawa University’s Faculty of Engineering and Design has adopted a single-department system in order to conduct interdisciplinary education and research to create new value and integrate different fields. We have established the following seven courses, taking into consideration the fields that are in high demand in the society and the fields that have become increasingly popular in recent years.   【Faculty of Engineering and Design’s 7 Courses】 Media and Product Design Course Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering Course Disaster and Crisis Management Course Computer Science, Systems, and Security Course Information and Communications Technology Course Mechanical Systems Course Advanced Materials Science Course   With the aim to foster “next-generation engineering human […]

In the inevitability of art history and industrial/technology history, the art field has been divided into many fields such as architecture, painting, sculpture, craft, and industrial design. It can be said that the role of (industrial) design in the 20th century was to “present new aesthetics in a capitalist society”. However, the rapid industrial innovation and social transformation that originated in ICT in recent years are expelling the old concept and demanding new adaptation not only for people’s lives but also for the value of life. The role of design that is required in the future is to “present new humanity in the next era”, but it is difficult to […]

It is no secret that university education has been dramatically affected by the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic. Kagawa University has taken the same measures as other universities in Japan, such as canceling the entrance ceremony, postponing the start of classes, and banning face-to-face lectures. The faculty members are responding with emergency teaching methods in place of regular classes. They are also focusing on providing more support to students than ever before, including understanding their living and learning environment and providing psychological support. The state of emergency was lifted, and face-to-face classes have resumed in the seminar and practical training courses from June 18. However, online and on-demand remote lessons […]

At Saga University, we have prepared “Webex,” which supports synchronous remote classes, and “Office365 Teams,” which can be used for on-demand distribution of materials and project-based classes, to support classes during COVID-19. We also launched the “Online Class Portal” in March to support teachers. In addition, a support group called “Gechide no Tamago“, which was voluntarily set up by volunteer students of the Faculty of Art and Regional Design to provide online support to new students played an active role. “Gechide” is a Japanese acronym for “Art”, “Community” and “Design”. The support for using the tools of the online classes is created from the perspective of the students taking the […]

Click here to read the 2nd Association of Design Departments and Schools in Japanese Public Universities Conference report article (first part) A question-and-answer session was followed, after the three universities presented their reports. Below are some of the questions and answers discussed.   Saga University “Resilience for Creation – What kind of ability to survive in this future?” Tokyo Metropolitan University　”How do you provide support to　students during regular classes?” Saga University　”Now that everything is online, the reality is that classes are not possible without students’ help. I have seminar students in their second and third years to help me in the Teacher Assistant (TA) type of work. The workload on […]

This conference was attended by 22 public universities with design faculties and departments, and 17 of the universities participated in an online symposium. In 2020, universities were confronted with the big questions of “What is a university?”, “What is education?” and were asked to come up with concrete measures amidst the unprecedented spread of COVID-19 and uncertainty about the future. This second conference’s theme was “Coronavirus: New Lifestyle and Design,” and a lively question-and-answer session was held after the sharing of case studies from each university. In the first half of the 2nd Association of Design Departments and Schools in Japanese Public Universities Conference, Saga University, Chiba University, and Kyoto […]

On November 29, 2020, Japan-China Design Symposium was held at the Design Common, a learning support facility on Kyushu University’s Ohashi Campus in Fukuoka. It was initially scheduled in February of the same year but was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The symposium was held online with five Chinese universities and three Japanese universities participated. The plenary session was held with simultaneous interpretation provided in Japanese, Chinese, and English.The theme of the first part was “The Current Status of Design Universities in Japan and China and the Potential and Effects of International Exchange”. Chinese and Japanese universities reported on their educational policies and initiatives in design-related faculties. In both […]

In response to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations, the SDGs Design Unit of the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University has established the SDGs Design International Awards 2019 to tackle the challenges facing humanity through design. The goal is to solicit design ideas that may change society from students worldwide, share their solutions widely, and apply them to create a sustainable society. In 2020, the competition theme was “Overcoming the Pandemic, Design for Evolution” and we received 184 submissions from high schools and higher educational institutions from 15 countries around the world. There were a wide range of ideas, including ideas for immediate responses to an […]

Association of Design Departments and Schools in Japanese Public Universities was formed in 2019 by design departments and graduate schools in Japanese public universities. These design departments and graduate schools in Japanese public universities have joined forces to collaborate toward the goals of the improvement and development of design education and research. In March 2021, Association of Design Departments and Schools in Japanese Public Universities released Design Academia, its 2020 yearbook summarizing the activities of the universities which participate in the association. The first half of Design Academia covers innovative initiatives and educational curricula of member universities, as well as the composition of the organization. It also includes a report […]

Proposal for Strategic Task Execution Methods for Design Projects – Using Information Design as an Example This proposal aims to use the concepts of “understanding characteristics of design projects” and “extracting success factors and risk hedging factors” to inform its research purpose, which is to establish which methods allow design projects to be executed in a strategic manner in line with the basic management processes of strategy formulation. In “Characteristics of Design Projects,” items for evaluation have been collected and organized based on past research into R&D, with 17 classifications of strengths and weaknesses (Table 1) and 13 classifications of opportunities and threats (Table 2) for an overall total of […]

This article is about a project jointly developed by Kyushu University and a local company. This joint study is the development of the design of a “student’s notebook for studying” in which students design a notebook that students really want. This study was conducted by the Kyushu University Faculty of Design’s Sugimoto Laboratory with Sanko Co., Ltd., a comprehensive printing business that is based in Imari, Saga Prefecture.This notebook was designed by the students themselves, and as such the project was undertaken as part of an industry-academic collaboration project, where students from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Design and Graduate School of Design participated. The three notebooks developed in 2016 and […]

The Akita Laboratory of the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University carried out a joint design engineering project in 2018 and 2019 as part of their education and research activities together with product designers and engineers from Takagi Co., Ltd., experts in electrical and electronic engineering from the National Institute of Technology – Kurume College, experts in system design engineering from Kyushu University, and students in the design strategy department. This project explores the ideal form of the IoT (Internet of Things) in our daily lives from the perspective of both design and engineering, with the purpose of proposing “ways of feeling” and products which enable us to feel the […]

Asia Digital Art Award FUKUOKA, established in 2001 here in Kyushu, Japan, encourages the creation of digital contents that combine top-notch technology with Asian sensibility. The competition strives to spread the notion of “high-level artistic expression based on logical thinking” by recognizing digital contents creators who represent Asian culture. This world-class Media Art competition serves to encourage the digital contents industry of Japan as well as realizing the potential of authentic digital media throughout Asia. All of us at Asia Digital Art Award FUKUOKA are looking forward to meeting Asia’s next generation of creators.   【2020 Asia Digital Art Award Guidelines for Application】 Categories ○General Category：For those who aim for […]