REORIENT:
READING EASTERN ASIA DEIGN HISTORY IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOCALIZATION

To try and resolve Eastern Asia’s marginalization in graphic design history, this research investigates the graphic design history in Taiwan as an example, argues for the reconception of design history from a deeper historical and globological perspective, and advocates adjusting the design history curriculum in marginalized regions. The meta-discourses of Euro-American modernism and postmodernism constitute the roots of privileged and prejudicial knowledge in the history of graphic design, establishing Western developments as the yardstick for the production of design history. Substantive frameworks are necessary for shaping design history. However, these frameworks are subject to change as historical conditions change. The recent rise of East Asian economies focuses attention on their culture, which historically has had a global influence over diverse fields including writing, printing and design. Acknowledging this historical influence is fundamental to the development of East Asian localities as distinctive design spheres, while opening up the scope for culture-based knowledge and understanding to perhaps reorient some aspects of homogenous Western design.

Taiwan’s sense of cultural marginalization is intensified because of its relationship with the emerging economic giant, mainland China, which has led to Taiwan’s exclusion from the WTO and other international organizations. Cultural erasure and homogenization brought about by globalization is a hot topic in cultural studies, causing considerable panic and anxiety. Culture under the latest version of capitalism is tied to broad global forces. However, Arjun Appadurai argues that the traffic is not all one way, with the central tension in the contemporary world being between ‘cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization.’ The health and development of Taiwanese design depends on identifying those design characteristics and capabilities that transcend the tangled influences of modernist design, global design, Chinese and Japanese cultural heritage.

This identification process can only proceed from a basis of solid historical research into Taiwanese design. Typically, design activity in Taiwan is seen to follow Hong Kong while its future development is predicted to be driven by Hong Kong and Mainland China. To understand Taiwan’s design means that research methods are needed that actively look for what is local while taking into consideration the rapid localization of external forces. One must see beyond the influence of the coastal Chinese cities including Hong Kong, and search for traces of the design ingenuity of early migrants from the southern mainland, of the influence of the material culture of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, of developments from the period of industrialization during Japanese rule, of Taiwan’s commitment to industrialization and economic development, while at the same time considering the multiple influences of Taiwan’s political environment. Only when Taiwan’s design history is known can Taiwanese design escape its current subordinate status, and can the view that ‘style analysis’, ‘canon admiration’ and the adoption of modernism, mass production and global design explain the development of its design culture be put to rest.