This year, for the first time ever, a curator is taking the reins in organizing the 2019 Young Designers’ Exhibition — and he is going to be making some significant changes.

The Best Design winners were announced at the Grand Ceremony on November 29. Among the winning designs, this year’s jury found trends in social design, green design, and artificial intelligence, among others.

Read on to learn about seven of the winning designs and concepts, dissected in more detail, diving into each designer’s background and the creative journeys behind their winning work.

Mistroom, a studio known for its smoothly textured book covers, has won several awards in book design in the past. Their entry, “Not Just Library 2018 Admission Ticket”, also won glowing praise from well-known Japanese designer Kashiwa Sato.

With economies of scale plundering limited resources and the global trends on environmental policies, it is foreseeable that the cost of extracting raw materials will be greater than that of using renewable resources. To keep business for long term success, designers or manufacturers should be involved in circular design as early as possible, as it is unavoidable yet crucial.

Based on this sagacious industrial model, the current exhibition “Circular Design – Are You In-Circled?” outlines the globally trendiest pioneering circular design.

No matter how media, technology, and social institutions develop, the core issue of design eventually returns to form as a response to human needs. In other words, the proposal of practical, innovative design solutions should start from the user’s perspective, and be achieved through the development of empathy in the design process.

Tahan Lin is like a walking encyclopedia of crowdfunding. He responds intuitively and speaks assuredly about his own observations and analyses when discussing crowdfunding and the current situation, trends, and cases on both the domestic and international front.

Taiwanese designer Yen-Ting Cho’s luxury scarf collection has been sold through the Museum of Art and Design Store in New York since 2017, and was first retailed by the SFMOMA Store in San Francisco this summer!

The visionary behind the new font, Tom Liou, could hardly contain his excitement as his font received public recognition for the first time, crying out, “No way! I can’t believe it!”. Besides a genuine interest in font design, he was also motivated by the chance to prove himself—and, even more importantly, to create something that would benefit society.