Return To The Origin Of Design

It has been almost two decades since industrial design was introduced into China. It appears that industrial design has been in the middle of booming development both in enterprises and education, while as a matter of fact, the lack of theoretical research results in alienation in understanding the concept of industrial design, which in turn affects its sound grow in China. Few inquire what design is and care about its essence and significance which deserve further pondering and research. If we remain ignorant of those, design activities will be far from their original intentions. Therefore, it's high time we started rethinking the origin of design and returning to it.Return to the origin of design is to be back to the destination, essence and significance, to put emphasis on them, which means a lot to industrial design business in China. To nations and enterprises, return to the original is being original, an advance to the national creative spirit; to the higher education of industrial design in China, return to the original is to foster the talented with creative spirit instead of product model or graphic designers, thus to play a part in development of nations and enterprises; from the humanism point of view, return to the original is embracing the liberal arts and the measure of human nature advocated in industrial design, instead of inhuman measure in scientism.This paper attempts to answer basic questions such as what design is, the essence and significance of design and so on based on the idea of return to the origin of design, and reclaim the destination and significance to further confirm the concept of "design is to serve people".