German Industrial Design Education Thought

Industrial design can provide huge economic benefits, as well as change life style of people, and furthermore, improve their living quality. For these reasons, it has been highly valued in various countries day by day. Along with the rapid growth of China's modern industry, especially after China's entrance into the WTO, the issue of industrial design becoming more and more crucial. However, the level of industrial design for a particular nation depends on the industrial design education of the nation. Among others, German is the earliest people in the world who being aware of a fact that education is the foremost approach for industrial-design-level improvement, and then takes advantage of it effectively. As a result of all levels within German governments furthering the education in industrial design, her industrial products has been dominated and widespread since the end of 19th century; what is more, her comprehensive national strength has begun to exceed Britain and France even to be the first great power in Europe with expedition.Recently, under economic globalization, China's products are not only in facing of the competition at international arena, but should be considering the increase demand of domestic consumers. So the effective educating a large amount of excellent talents in industrial design filed constitutes the most urgent problem. At the same time, China's modern industry has a short history; moreover, the theories and practices for industrial design education are still in a very early stage. Therefore, the paper tries to sum up some experiences through examining and analyzing the thinking in industrial design education in Germany since the middle of the 19th century, in order to borrow several useful ideas for China's developing industrial design education.