Seventeenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

In the long history of globalisation, China has faced a growing detachment and contradiction between its capitalist identity and its cultural identity. And industrial design, as a field inextricably linked to the industrialisation process and inextricably linked to its cultural and aesthetic context, prominently embodies this contradiction. However, in China, designer identity research in industrial design is still in its early stages. Nonetheless, China’s rising economic and cultural status necessitates a precise theoretical and empirical definition of this group. China’s industrial design research is now more focused on practical innovation, and no systematic and comprehensive study of industrial identity exists. This research is based on ethnography, combining case studies, interviews, and observation to explore the situation of independent Chinese industrial designers and designers working in big companies’ design departments. Overall, the goal of this study is to investigate the reality of the situational evolution of identity in the context of globalisation by looking at the history and current state of Chinese industrial design from the perspectives of design, manufacturing, and business. It also conducts multidisciplinary integration research on Chinese designers’ national identities in the context of nationalism, such as design history, group identity, and business.