In 2007, by the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design /ICSID, WIDD(World Industrial Design Day)established and then for each year around June 29,  the establishment anniversary day, A series of ICSID events will be carried out all over the world. Moreover, Discussion and session in a theme of Industrial design are deployed in various places.

This year in Japan, one of events was held in O lounge on June 14 which built by Musashino Art University located in Design hub. Japan has held a public symposium in accordance with WIDD in each year, this year's proposal has been changed a little by Kohei Nishiyama, the new chairman of Elephant design Co., Ltd., a workshop was carried out by all participants.

The reason why dare to hold this closed event? That is because of theme for this year is “How to do with ICSID”. According to this question, at the start Mr. Nishiyama gave an explanation. Considering some people may still didn’t know much about ICSID, this report is upon to the contents and gave a brief introduction. 

ICSID is a professional organization of industrial designers established in London on 1957.By miraculously, 1957 is also the year the Good Design Award was established; therefore they have the same age. Begins with a first place of a proposal made by French designer Jacques Vienot in 1953, then the first actual activity, an international conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1959.

Presently, World Design Capital, the largest scale of event is performed for each biennial, this year it is held in Helsinki, Finland, and also prepared to be hold in the cape town of South Africa in 2014. And the secretariat of the current office is in Canada.

What kinds of problems ICSID are having right now? In short, it was said that “The centripetal force of ICSID is missing”, related to this topic, explanation along with a brief self-introduction are given by directors previous, Mr.Kazuo Tanaka from GK Design and Mr.Nishiyama.

The expression of losing centripetal force is decreasing in the number of members (Especially the rapid reduction of the number of members in Europe but for the Asian region it tends to increase slightly).This phenomenon is not only limited to ICSID in fact. Mr. Asaka from Japan Industrial designers’ Association (JIDA) gave an explanation for this. According to Mr. Asaka, even in the professional organization of Japan design, there also consist some issues such as sluggish growth in the number of members and non homogenization of the age balance in memberships.

Thereafter, a brain storming on the issue of ICSID was carried out also include self-introduction and problems facing the design industry from the perspectives both in industry and academic fields. By omitting the formal proceedings with more information on this topic which will be published at a later date, it occurred to my mind while listening to the story that “For ICSID members, what feelings were they carrying in operating ICSID at the moment of its inception?”

And actually because I found out the first issue of Journal of Japanese Society for the Science of Design “Science of Design” and tried reading it. There was a description of the problem in design industry at that time; and a positive “intention” has been described until refreshing. Part of passion quoted as following.

“デザインの「学」が成り立つか否かというような問題は未解決であるが,本学会の構成員はおそらく,そのような疑問にしりごみすることなく,むしろやむにやまれぬ知的愛に駆られて,それぞれのテーマに取り組んでいるに相違ない。そういう知的愛がなかったら本学会は生まれなかったであろうし,また成長もしなかったであろう。”

(Problems such like if the “science” of design is standing up or not are still unsolved, this is probably the members of this association rather to driven by compelling intellectual love without flinch such questions, and there has no difference in working on each theme. Therefore, without such intellectual love, our association will not be exist nor growth. )

“学会の発足以来3ヶ年余を経過したが,まだ誇るに足る業績をあげるにいたらない。しかし解決すべき問題や研究テーマは無数にあって,研究者の意欲をはげしくかき立てゝいる。つまり本学会はまだ未開拓の原野の入口に立ったばかりだといえる。”

(Three years passed since our association has been established, though there still has not much achievement to be proud of. However too many issues and research theme we need to solve, the willingness of researchers have vigorously stirred. In other words, we can say our association is still standing at the entrance to untapped wilderness.)

After reading this article, I could tell participations enjoyed that time of launch for making this book. During this discussion, it even came out glance at talk, to become a succeed and something exciting, I wonder if it is important for participations themselves that hold hope to have fun and enjoy. Depend on noticed by it and both reflected on my own while I was reading this article.

Back on talk, in the case of ICSID, when it launched would have been full of hope surely but with some sort of problem as well. By some chance, the present problems may be a place where we would like to go at that time. However, if considering the point that aware of any problems at launched time, when the awareness of issues like this time transformed into “Hope”, extraordinary potential may lead to a birth of "something". Situation of facing front to the problems in this sense might be “still standing at the entrance to untapped wilderness”.

From now on, ICSID looks forward to what kind of hope will be found out. 

Contributor/ Yusuke ASHIZAWA (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba University Graduate School of Engineering)

Translator/Xiaolin He (JDP)