Good designs deserve good markets
Bangladesh has the potential to introduce modern designs to compete in the international market
Avik Sanwar Rahman
Industrial Product Designing would help sustain and evolve the products of the local small and medium industries, by adopting designs suited to competitive international markets, observed the speakers of a three day long workshop on Formal Product Design Education in Bangladesh. The workshop held at a local hotel in Dhaka ended last Monday.In the inaugural speech the team leader of Design and Technology Centre (DTC) Franz Bauer remarked that to create an international market for Bangladeshi products, there is no alternate for formal product design education in Bangladesh. Professor Hartmut, an expert in product designing from Germany said in his speech that he was amazed, observing how local people changed and reshaped anything as per their demand, whereas most of them never received any proper education or guidelines on product designing. The professor also said that innovative modern designs of rickshaws with a lighting system would be acceptable in Germany rather than the existing traditional rickshaws of Bangladesh. A rickshaw would cost 5000 Euro or Tk. three lakhs whereas Tk. seven thousand makes a local rickshaw. "Bangladesh is producing electronic gadgets like voltage stabilisers but that also lacks modern designs," said the Professor. Korean expert Kun-Pyo Lee said that since 1996 Korea has developed its product designing and started exporting all over the world. There are three major factors involved here. The government is to generate policy, industries to produce the products, and then schools and institutions to teach and research product designing. The participants of the workshop were entrepreneurs, local brand developers; representatives from universities, educationists and policy makers in education. The goal was to make participating institutes aware of the requirements needed to set up an industrial design department, where students could use the viability of this profession as a career option. The universities and entrepreneurs would go along with the profile within the environment of the universities and use the input of professional help in the development and diversification of products and ensure sustainability of the product in the ever-competing market. The potential products that would be benefited from product designing are leather, metal works, carpentry, jute and handicrafts, said the speakers. The workshop was conducted by Design and Technology Centre a project of German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) who are working in product designing for one and half years.
| 
