In Support of Design Industry

MKE to go all out to help designers develop designs with traditional Korean motifs and go global


The Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) announced on April 27 its plan for the development of the design industry to lead the age of fusion of technology and sensitivity, the ministry said.
The plan is aimed at strengthening the industry's capacity by fusing technology and design to support SMEs bids to sharpen their competitive power, ministry officials said.
They said the plan has been put together to revive the downtrodden design industry under an integrated and systematic government policy to the extent that it will be a futuristic growth engine.
The three-strategy plan calls for putting the design industry among the seven largest in the world by 2015. First, it will upgrade the industry's competitive power through the development of design. Second, it will foster design companies and boost the professionalism of the designers. And third, it will build a futuristic design ecology.
The design industry's competitive edge climbed to 9th in 2009, but fell below 10th in 2010. Its market, too, struggled in 2010, reaching only 5.1 trillion won, down from 5.2 trillion won in 2008, with the number of employees down to 50,000 from 54,000 in 2008, according to MKE statistics.
Under the strategies, designing will be considered jointly with R&D activities in a measure to develop a fusion-type R&D with design, although design followed the development of technologies first, until now.
The Design of the Future will be pushed to find future design trends and leading future designs by taking advantage of design methods to forecast the potential needs of consumers. This year, R&D on robot design will be undertaken and then extended to the activities of other industrial areas.
The ministry will launch ‘the R&D Design Research Club?at the Daedeok Research Complex with 17 members comprised of universities, design firms, research institutes and consulting firms, among others, during the first half of the year.
The MKE will also set up a tailor-made design support program in consideration of the special nature of SMEs, especially those with R&D facilities in the area of R&D for design and equipment. From this year, the excellent manufacturing technology research centers will be upgraded to excellent design research institutes.
The support to individual design firms will not be a one-time thing, but it will be provided to develop designs that can be used for all similar commodities. Regional design centers such as those in Gwangju, Busan and Daejeon will provide support to SMEs in the nearby industrial complexes to help solve their problems in design. The number of regional design centers will be expanded to 25 to cover the increased number of SMEs in the industrial complexes around the country.
The MKE will select firms with potential to grow into global enterprises for extensive support in various areas of their operations, including design development, commodity planning, production and logistics, among others, to include all business areas under the total design capacity, thus strengthening support.
The government will also help design firms advance overseas to set up design centers especially in such emerging market countries as Vietnam, preferably in joint ventures with local partners. Currently, a design center is in operation in Ningbo, China, and this year a design center will open in Italy.
They will also hold design consulting, seminars and education programs overseas in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
The MKE also plans to introduce new curriculums including design, engineering and humanism and set up a consultative arrangement between the design industry and universities to produce talented designers to meet the demand for designers in each industry. Currently, 10 universities and colleges have design departments or design colleges including Seoul University, KAIST, Hongik University and Sungshin Women? University, with a major emphasis on the fusion of design and technology.
The MKE design industry development plan intends to implement basic design technologies that can benefit all design firms, such as those on color, new design materials, User Interface and packaging, among others. The plan also includes searching for design materials in Korean history and culture so that they can be used to design an exclusive traditional Korean design DNA. nw