The Department of Visual Communication Design, STUST, won the 2021 German Red Dot Awards for Brands and Communication Design in August, one of the four major international design competitions in the world. With the grant of the school’s 110th annual international technical competition, a number of works by student teams stood out of more than 9,000 works from 49 countries and received great recognition. In addition to the work of the "One Eye Vision" team that won the Best of the Best Red Dot award in the category of Interface & User Experience Design, the work of the "Explore Tainan Park from the Plants" team participated in the Digital Solutions Category, the works of "Hand-Makers" and "Freedom," participated in the Film & Animation Category. All of these works were recognized and honored by the Red Dot Awards.

["Explore Tainan Park from the Plants" is a work by students from the Department of Visual Communication, STUST: Wei-Zhe Hsu, Yu-Ting Jian, Yi-Chen Zhan, and Ru-Jing Wu.]

The award-winning work "Explore Tainan Park from the Plants" was created by the student team—Wei-Zhe Hsu, Yu-Ting Jian, Yi-Chen Zhan, and Ru-Jing Wu—directed by Associate Professor Zi-Ru Chen. They jointly designed and created a work based on the theme "Plant Story Museum at Tainan Park." The content includes online pictorial exhibitions and offline guided tours. Their work also won the Visual Communication Design Bronze Award in the Creative Design Competition of 2021 Youth Design Festival this May. Despite the suspension of physical graduation exhibitions in mid-May due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the students did not stop optimizing their works. Later, they won 2nd Place in the Product Design Group of the 2021 National Student Project Production Competition for Universities of Technology, first place in the Visual Communication Design Category of Tainan Creative New Talent Award in the 2021 Golden Point Rookie Sponsor Special Awards, and first place of Interactive Design Category in Pegatron Collection Award. This August, they also won the Red Dot Award in the 2021 German Red Dot Brand and Communication Design Award. The fact that student graduation projects have won numerous awards at home and abroad shows that fruitful results of the work on student development on the side of the Department of Visual Communication Design at STUST.

[The work “Hand-Maker” by the team of the Department of Visual Communication Design, STUST, is a frame-by-frame animation created by six students: Rong-Tzi Chang, Guan-Lin Li, Jia-Ying Lu, Shiang-Yu Chen, Yuan-Zhen Chu, and Yu-Shin Meng.]

The work "Explore Tainan Park from the Plants" was greatly affirmed by the judges. It is believed to be able to develop guides, experiences, and other related productions based on the rich tree species ecology of the century-old Tainan Park, with exquisite design and physical and online experience. It is a good work that has a high degree of completion and can be applied to the development of Tainan's in-depth cultural tourism. Therefore, it won the first prize in the Visual Communication Design Category of the Tainan Creative Rookie Award. In addition, the editor of FUNDESIGN (fundesign.tv) also commented that this work can take the public green space around life as the theme. The rich online exhibition presents historical culture and plant briefs that are easily overlooked, while the clear and delicate illustrations are highly recognizable. It has been selected as the selected works of the 2021 New Generation Design Exhibition in its e-magazine, which shows that experts from all walks of life have a strong sense of resonance with the concept of the work.

[The work "Freedom" from STUST and the student team (from left to right): Ting-Yu He, Zhe Chang, Yun-Yao Tsao, Li-Rong Chen, Wen-Jun Hsu, and Ting-Yu Lin.]

The award-winning work "Hand-Makers" was co-directed by Prof. Chian-Fan Liu from the Department of Visual Communication Design and Prof. Shi-Jie Liao from the Department of Multimedia and Computer Entertainment Science. It is a frame-by-frame animation work jointly created by the six core members: Rong-Tzi Chang, Guan-Lin Li, Jia-Ying Lu, Shiang-Yu Chen, Yuan-Zhen Chu, and Yu-Shin Meng. This work was achieved as a result of the team’s cooperation with the local Chinese opera group "Yingyi Opera Troupe" in Tainan, which transformed the aesthetics of traditional Taiwanese opera into a hand-made still-motion doll animation. The work combines traditional opera culture in order to present the suffering and confusion of one’s growth on the stage of life. Finally, through the dialogue between one and his/her self, the identity of one’s value and his/her existence is completely presented.

The student design team took "inheritance and identification" as the core of its work, combining local Taiwanese opera culture and opera presentations. In addition to winning the 2021 German Red Dot Brand and Communication Design Award, this work also won the 2021 A+ Creative Season Digital Media and Interactive Design Gold Award, 2021 Youth Design Festival Digital Multimedia and Game Design Award, the 2021 Los Angeles Independent Women's Film Festival in the US. With this great number of outstanding achievements and shortlisted screenings, the students' capabilities of animation design have been highly affirmed by domestic and international competitions.

Another award-winning 3D animation thematic work "FREEDOM" was produced by a team of five students including Ting-Yu He, Zhe Chang, Yun-Yao Tsao, Li-Rong Chen, Wen-Jun Hsu, and Ting-Yu Lin, directed by Prof Wen-Jun Hsu from the Department of Visual Communication Design. In addition to winning the 2021 Germany In addition to the Red Dot Competition Brand and Communication Design Award, it was also among finalists of Digital Media and Interactive Experience Design Category in the A+ Cultural Resources Creative Season and won the 17th Technical School Computer Animation Competition and other good results.

The design concept of this work is mainly about the importance of freedom and the seriousness of the destruction of the earth’s ecology. The team hopes that the creation of this 3D animation work can foreground the concept that it is greatly important for people to cherish the Earth as we are all part of the earth and that they should contribute to the promotion of the concept of freedom and global ecology in this era of rapid technological development by their interpretation through 3D animation.

Deng-Maw Lu, President of STUST, said that in recent years, STUST has performed very well in many design exhibitions at home and abroad. In the future, STUST will continue to train students into world-class talents, so that students will continue to be shining on the global arena.