At the 2023 PIN UP CONCEPT DESIGN AWARDS, many students from our university received awards. The award was unusual with eight awards, including the "Gold" Award, which was the first prize in the Kolmar corporate category, and the "Gold" Award in the product industry category. These results are the results of the efforts of students who studied day and night to create excellent product design works, but the role of the professor who worked with them and guided them is more important than anything else.

Professor of Design Cho Yoo-seok

So I met Professor Yoo-seok Cho, a former chief designer at LG Electronics and currently teaching product design at our university's design department. Professor Cho was also honored by the Korea Industrial Designers Association in January with the "Excellent Leader Award" in recognition of his leadership in creating outstanding results through the development of new and creative designs by students. I checked out some questions from the professor.

Please introduce yourself briefly.

I'm Professor Cho Yoo-seok of the design department. I used to work at LG Electronics as a working designer, but I quit in my 20th year and moved to school, so it's already been 8 years. I'm trying to have a sense of balance throughout the industry and academia. Currently, the Department of Design teaches 'Design Idea Drawing', 'Design Research', 'Product Service System Design', and 'Industrial Design Project'.

What made me do this

In a way, I think I had a longer dream of becoming a cartoonist than a designer when I was in school. At first, I fell in love with science fiction cartoons and drew after the appearance, movement, or structure of robots, especially transforming robots. Also, the story is very important for successful comics, like the recent webtoon story is newly introduced as a movie or drama. Until middle school, I developed my own cartoon characters (now called character design) and wrote down stories. When I was doing self-study at night after going to high school, I was also caught by my teacher while drawing cartoons, but he didn't scold me and asked me to borrow the painting. The next day, my art teacher called me, and I went to the art academy you recommended. At the time, I was not familiar with the field of "design," but after attending an art academy, I found out that the paintings I was drawing were close to design. The course has been decided like this.

Can you give me a rough introduction to the product design major of the design department?

It is said that the e-x-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n often used when introducing product design is to design from needles to spaceships. In other words, the product design major of our university's Department of Design is where we learn the ability to design industrial products that meet industrial trends such as electronics and mobility, as well as various daily products we use, such as furniture, kitchenware, and cleaning tools that are easily encountered in our lives. Therefore, our major can develop the ability to design by considering the usability and practicality of products as well as beauty based on researching life and users.

What is the most memorable or rewarding experience you have had while teaching and guiding your students?

I think I should talk about my most recent experience. Last year, the students who taught me while teaching graduation works for 4th grade product design majors worked very hard. Not only during the semester but also during the summer vacation, the students themselves took only two weeks off and devoted themselves to the graduation work project at school, so they were able to have a high-quality graduation work exhibition. During the vacation with the students, they had meetings and gave feedback twice a week, and the concept product design works created based on an in-depth understanding of users were also happy to receive a large number of awards by submitting them to the 2023 Pin-Up Concept Design Award, an international competition, after the graduation exhibition. It's still before graduation, but two of these students are already employed, and most of them are currently doing internships at design companies.

This time, you were honored with the "Excellent Leader Award" in recognition of your outstanding leadership, with the winning rate of the pin-up concept design award of students majoring in product design at our university exceeding 50% this time, far exceeding the average award rate of major domestic design universities (around 15%).How do you feel about winning the award?

I am trying to support students majoring in product design so that they can explore deeply and think about design. The high award rate obtained from the highly recognized pin-up concept design award at home and abroad is the result of our university's product design curriculum meeting industrial trends and industrial demands. We will continue to guide students majoring in product design so that they can design products that read and adapt to rapidly changing industrial society trends, and grow into designers who can understand users and empathize with their experience of use.

Can you explain the PIN UP CONCEPT DESIGN AWARDS?

The PIN UP CONCEPT DESIGN AWARDS is an international design competition hosted by the Korea Industrial Designers Association (Kaid) and sponsored by the government (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy). In addition, it is a rich competition held jointly by companies (CDZ, Kolmar Korea) to provide prize money (prize money, intern connection, etc.). The purpose of the PIN UP CONCEPT DESIGN AWARDS is to predict the rapidly changing trend of the times with "Insight, Expansion, and Vision" for the future society and to discover designers who enrich the future with new design ideas. In the end, the goal is to find new designers. Therefore, it is an international competition that is well known to college students studying design. And it's a competition where the judges are well-known designers in the industry who are actively engaged in practice in the field, so it's a trendy and fair competition.

Is there anything you would like to say to students majoring in product design in the Department of Design and freshmen who want to major in it?

I think it would be nice to have a lot of different experiences that can only be done when you are in college. This is because designers have no choice but to understand and judge objects and environments based on their own experiences. Instead of focusing on finding a job all four years, you need activities to improve your experience by planning various kinds of external activities, clubs, part-time jobs, sports, and travel, especially every vacation. And in the lower grades, which are in the first and second grades, I think it is necessary to explore 'what I like, what I am good at, what I hate'. Design studies are also divided into various fields (product, vision, video), and I hope that I can build up my own experience assets to find my career path in the field I am good at and like it as a hobby. Everyone has no regrets when you judge based on your own experience of choosing and digesting it as if you are chewing on your own will, not just because someone likes you. Lastly, if there is a field that you are interested in in a lot of experience, it is also good to dig deep. Even if you think you're good at it, knowing it on the surface is different from experiencing it firsthand. Designers need an understanding of their users' minds and a persistent penetration to solve their problems. Therefore, it will be very helpful to meet many people, listen to opinions, and become a fan of some things, without making the experience narrow. Design students and freshmen, I always support you!