Design currently is a growing industry in Taiwan. The goal of “Fashion Academy” is to train professionals in fashion design. Upcoming in 2016, the College of Design will establish two entrepreneurial majors: Costume Design and Fashion Marketing & Management. Each major is going to accept 45 new students.
Today, there are nearly 130 design-related programs developed in 63 Taiwanese universities. Professor Jen Yen, Vice President and Dean of College of Design, states that LTU’s foundational design program – commercial design – was established since 1988. In 2001, to fulfill Taiwan’s growing demands in design industry, LTU had found the College of Design, with four majors: Digital Content Design, Visual Communication Design, Creative Product Design, and Fashion Design.
Yen also believes that, with sufficient and advanced resources and production chains, textile industries became one of the important economic generators in central Taiwan. Most of clothing businesses today are eagerly expecting universities to provide fashion and innovative fabric design professionals. To fulfill future demands for this industry, LTU decided to found the Fashion Academy, focusing on clothing design, research, and management.
The original directions for the College of Design remains in three areas: practice, digital, and research. The college since the foundation had educated many outstanding students. In 2015 alone, 3 projects from the Department of Visual Communication Design were awarded “Red Dot” and “Best of the Best.”
In March, 2015, “the Third Eye,” invented by Wang Wen-shen, a Master’s candidate of Creative Product Design, was nominated by the Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA). The main concept was installing infrared ray scanners to observe vehicles within 100m for discovering blind-spots.

Written by Yu Wen-wen, United Daily News, Taichung, 08/03/2015