Just out of curiousity, how would one rate an industrial designer from Asia compared to industrial designers from places such as the UK, USA, Europe and Australia? I mean, like, what are the main differences in terms of their work styles, skills etc.?
You will have vast differences as Asia is huge. even by country it will change.
working in San Francisco is different than Palo Alto and Santa Cruz.
A funny thing is the Far East goes elsewhere. US goes to Europe.
Europe goes to the US. How many times have you heard of a US company using a consultancy in Taipai or Sydney? US companies go to Europe, Italy, Germany, UK in general.
You might get broad sweeping generalizations and here’s some:
Japan, corporations will do explorations of concepts that will never reach production, poor at groundbreaking products, because of that good at design refinement. Top end plastic tooling, but it’s not going to be low cost.
Mentally tough? If you are living in a major city, it’s going to be hard to go from a 1600-2000 square foot house or 700-900 square foot apartment to a shoebox of 300-400 square feet.
Korea, probably not a great place to work, Samsung was doing some nice work. The big companies like LG, Samsung have all the big US consultancies doing stuff for them. FitchRS, IDEO, DC, etc.
They get caught up in featuritis and are always comparing themselves to Japan and as such are followers.
China, Legend is trying to build a brand. Manufacturing savvy if you can get through to the top tier players. You got to be careful here to get stuff done right, but it can be done.
Taiwan, lots of capabilities in softgoods and compact electronics and language is not so much a barrier.
India, probably lots of capabilities, but not sure why we don’t see lots of goods coming from India. For one thing English is prevelant.
Malaysia, soft goods and high end electronics, big players are here.
Australia, too small a country population wise, name 5 big Australian brands doing great work, there’s your answer. Too many designers for the size of the country is my guess for the amount of work to go around.