On Sept. 23th, hosted by the School of Digital Media (SDM), Jiangnan University (JU), the 8th International Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) was grandly held in our university. Prof. Hu Jun from Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT) as well as JU’s adjunct professor acted as the Chairman of the conference, and Prof. Loe Feijs from EUT and Prof. Steven Kyffin both served as the Joint Chairman of the conference. JU Vice President Ji Zhicheng, Liu Yuan and Cao Ying, Dean and Executive Dean of the JU’s SDM, attended the opening ceremony of the conference. The conference saw 30 foreign scholars as well as more than 20 domestic experts, nearly 200 students and teachers participating in this gathering.
With professor Hu presiding over the ceremony, Vice President Ji first gave a welcome speech in the opening ceremony. He expressed his desire to create a new channel between design educational institutions and enterprises as well as the social demands through this conference. After Dean Liu’s introduction of JU’s SDM, the scholars present voiced confidence in its promising prospect with the opportitunities of the emerging culture industry. After that, Professor Steven Kyffin also made a brief speech, conveying the insistence and passion for design work from the perspective of a design educator in a humorous speaking manner. He hoped this conference would push the wheels of design to go forward both in theory and in practice.
The theme of this conference is on “Research Design”. Topics like Social and Cultural Design, Dynamic Design Patterns and Mathematical Calculation Graphic-designing and other issues are under heated discussion. The whole conference was mainly divided into three parts: keynote reports, paper discussions, and theme design competitions.
In addition, Professor Chirs Dorsett, a designer and social scientist from UK Northumbria University shared his research on Semiotics; and Professor David Frohlich specializing in Interaction Design who is the Director of the Digital World Research Center, demonstrated the relationship between the media and the products.
The day before the opening ceremony, a preparatory meeting of DeSForM was held. With their new research achievements and design works, guests both from Education and Business circles gathered together to share the cutting-edge achievements of design research and practice. They also spoke of the contributions to which Design is making for the emerging industries such as social public service, production safety, education and the immaterial economics.
Founded by Philips, Eindhoven University of Technology in 2005, DeSForM has become a global design conference which has attracted wide international attention with years of development. DeSForM intends to investigate the nature of matter—making design products and what they are and what they will be. DeSForM believes that only by totally changing the existing design concepts, can we achieve innovations.
JU Vice President JI Zhichen
Prof. Hu JUn
PreparatoryMeeting
Group Picture
