Applying local culture features into creative craft products design

Abstract

The impact of worldwide commercial competition has brought about the emergence of cultural creative industries. We are now approaching a new era of aesthetic economy but also facing a decline in craft industries resulted from the impact of competitors' low-priced commodities. In order to upgrade our design industry, Taiwanese government has undertaken an important project titled "Challenge 2008: National Development Focus Plan". The emphases of the plan are on exploiting our rich cultural resources for developing design creativity and advancing the design industries by creating and promoting "experiential products," a reflection of the actual Taiwanese lifestyle. The purpose of this study is to convey/integrate Taiwanese local features into the design of cultural creative product. For the design processes, this study adapts the culture product design model, developed by Professor Rungtai Lin, with three main steps of attaining Cultural-specific features, formulating design concept model, and completing cultural product design. A series of craft products have been created as a demonstration to provide designers with valuable reference for successfully designing cultural creative products. An illustration for attributes of cultural product design is detailed for further synthesis of the design process. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.