Lin Horng-Jer
President of Taiwan Poster Design Association
February 2010

As an old Chinese proverb goes, 'everything adheres to the principles of heaven; heaven, earth, and men are inherently united.' Everything should follow the course of nature, and human beings should be harmoniously integrated with the universe. The respect and awe for God has influenced for several thousand years people's attitude towards getting along with nature. The relationship between human beings and nature should be interdependent and combined into one. Both should befriend and harmonize with each other. Only through the realization of peaceful coexistence of human beings and nature can the broken earth be soothed.

The phenomena, such as global warming and environmental pollution, have remained unceasing problems since the commencement of the 21st century. Having been faced with abrupt environmental changes, human beings come to have a profound appreciation that human beings and nature are closely connected and interwoven. The TPDA Annual Members Exhibition 2010 takes 'the harmonious relationship between men and nature' as the theme in the hope that poster design may help stimulate care for the natural environment. From the process of creation to the exhibition of creations, people are reminded of what attitude they should adopt towards the natural environment and how they should treat it so that human beings may keep reproducing and prospering within such environment, which is also how our Association functions for social concern through poster design.

For this year's annual exhibition, we invited several world-famous designers to present their works and also received another great creations separately from Kari Piippo and Timo Berry of Finland, Akio Ogawa, Mitsuo Katsui and Shin Matsunaga of Japan, Kan Tai-keung, Freeman Lau Siu Hong, Eddy Yu and Hung Lam of Hong Kong, Lu Jingren of China, Jianping He and Lex Drewinski of Germany, which indicates not only the Association's care for the Earth and environment has been recognized but also the Association's high international reputation has helped encourage the participation of world-famous designers. In addition, during the past two years, our members took an active role in international design contests and won a plenty of awards. The constant participation and award winning has expanded Taiwan's design landscape and enhanced the visibility of Taiwan design on the international stage. Such achievements deserve our great recognition.

In terms of promoting poster design, we successfully presented Taiwan PoStar Award last year. This year we kept co-organizing the poster design contest on Taiwan indigenous people at national level, which has received a tremendous response. Here we'd like to give special thanks to the members for their great promotion effort and support so that we could achieve fruitful results.

'Design' has become a term that requires not just techniques but also representation of creativity, sincerity, and profoundness. The social concern communicated through poster design usually can get close to people's mind and gain popularity. As far as designers are concerned, the perfect applause and encouragement appear at the moment when their creations arouse smiles or similar feelings and touch each heart that cares.