I have a year left and would love to go abroad to work. However have no idea how to create the contacts to do so. How should I go about this? Also, tell us about your experience working in Asia as far as work and play.
I work in China for a few years now. how did i get there ? after graduating i took the chance to make an internship in a Chinese company, and i m still there
It’s still a very good experience as the company is really Chinese and i m the only foreigner there, so i had to adapt pretty quickly. despite that sketching is a universal language it can’t help you in all the situations.
the culture difference and the way to handle working relation here is also something that you have to learn quickly if you don’ want to make too many mistakes.
So i don t know where you want to go in Asia, cause it’s pretty huge, their are plenty of places there where you don’t need to learn the language, also depend of the company you ll work for, but my advice will be : learn it when you are still planning to go there.
Then try to get some contact there. try the social network website, here in China all work trough what they call the “guangxi” it mean relation, and you mainly get work from friends of friends of friends. so the more you have friends the more you have chance to get work. in fact i guess it s everywhere the same …
thanks for the response. I do have a contact in Shanghai that I could work with. Know anything about Shanghai? Also, I’d like to learn from other peoples experience to help me decide which country…China, Japan, Thailand…
Shanghai design and artistic scene is becoming more and more active now, so it’s a nice place to live. Plus really lots of things to do here.
About Japan and Thailand i don’t know, I’ m also interested to hear people who have experience there.
I find working in Asia to be very exciting. The pay may not be as high in general but cost of living is lower in some places too. Well, except for major cities. I think there are many places in Asia to work in design, even inside manufacturing companies and factories…actually it feels like there’s more opportunties there now than in the West and not limited to consulting or brand corporations. Contract factories make use of designers there to satisfy different clientele.
I find the Asian workers to be very diligent and hard working so be prepared to work hard and fast and there’s little tolerence for slack.
ID follows manufacturing and the major manufacturing centers now are all mostly in Asian countries where brand development and growing standard of living and consumer base will support demand of designers.
Japan has been traditionally the most developed in terms of high level design but Korea, Taiwan, and now China are quickly gaining in sophistication. I think they woul dbe the most receptive to forign input and designers.
Korean brands and products have come a long way and have made huge strides.
Another intersting place would be India but for teh timebeing still a bit behind the level of Korea, China, Taiwan.
Start sending yuor resume and portfolio out and see what happens. =)
Are there websites where I know where to send my portfolio? How do I find out about places to work in Asia?
What is it like to live in Asia as well, I mean pollution-wise, water quality, healthcare? I just want to see whether it would be possible to last there more than 1 year 
Any idea where LG gets most of its ID work done? Within Korea or designers in North America with manufacturing wherever?
I really liked their “pebble” shaped MP3 player. It was pretty awesome but the capacity just didn’t cut it.
I work for a very large Japanese tech company, you would be suprised how few non-Japanese work in these big brand companies.
I can not speak for car companies, but in terms of product side they don’t really want to deal with 2 years in/out style which is more common in the west.
However, I think Ive heard of a few companies like Hitachi and Mitsubishi that run year by year contract work where foreigners basically do concept work - but since many don’t speak Japanese they don’t get to do much of the real work because of the communication gap with the engineers and marketing.
I would coroflot search company names and cities, see who pops up and ask them their 2cents.
Regarding LG they have a few hundered Korean designers working out of Korea doing almost all the design work. Its satellite offices are mainly for satellite work. From the grapevine