The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup

My main focus in designing The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was to create a meaningful connection between contemporary digital culture and traditional cultural heritage.

Many cultural preservation projects struggle to engage younger audiences because they often rely on conventional methods of presentation. At the same time, internet culture is frequently viewed as temporary, informal, or lacking cultural value. I wanted to challenge both assumptions.

The primary goal was not simply to create an interesting visual identity or a humorous campaign. Instead, I wanted to explore whether a familiar internet expression could become a gateway for people to rediscover traditional culture.

By combining the widely used online expression "Kaobei" with the traditional ritual of "Jiaobei" temple divination, I sought to create a shared cultural experience that felt accessible, relevant, and engaging for contemporary audiences. Rather than asking people to learn about culture, I wanted them to participate in it.

Another important objective was to encourage dialogue between generations. Older generations are often more familiar with traditional rituals, while younger generations are deeply immersed in digital culture. The project created a common point of reference where both groups could engage with the same experience from different perspectives.

Humor also played an important role. I believe humor is one of the most powerful forms of communication because it lowers barriers and encourages participation. Through playful interaction, people became more willing to explore cultural meanings that they might otherwise overlook.

On a broader level, I wanted to demonstrate that culture is not static. Culture continuously evolves through language, behavior, technology, and social interaction. The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was designed as an experiment in cultural reinterpretation—showing how traditional practices can remain relevant by engaging with contemporary forms of expression.

Ultimately, my goal was simple:

**To transform a familiar internet phrase into a meaningful cultural conversation.**

If visitors left the experience smiling, reflecting, and seeing both digital culture and traditional culture in a new way, then I felt the project had achieved its purpose.

Winning the award is not the end of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup; in many ways, it is the beginning of a larger cultural conversation.

My future vision for the project is to expand it beyond a single event and develop it into a long-term cultural platform that explores the relationship between language, communication, technology, and contemporary culture.

One direction is to transform the project into a traveling exhibition that can be presented in museums, cultural centers, universities, and public spaces. The themes explored by the project—digital communication, cultural identity, social participation, and language evolution—are relevant far beyond Taiwan. I believe audiences in different countries can also relate to the universal human desire to express emotions, seek understanding, and connect with others.

Another possibility is to develop new interactive experiences inspired by emerging forms of communication. Language is constantly evolving, especially in the digital era. New expressions, memes, symbols, and social behaviors emerge every day. I am interested in exploring how these contemporary forms of expression can be documented, interpreted, and transformed into meaningful cultural experiences.

The project may also expand into educational initiatives. As an educator, I see great potential for using humor, participation, and storytelling to help younger generations engage with cultural heritage in more accessible ways. The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup demonstrates that culture does not need to be distant or formal—it can be playful, interactive, and deeply relevant to everyday life.

In the future, I would also like to explore collaborations with cultural institutions, museums, researchers, and creative communities to further investigate how digital culture is reshaping collective memory and cultural identity.

Ultimately, my goal is not simply to preserve culture, but to keep culture alive.

Culture survives when people continue to participate in it, reinterpret it, and make it meaningful for their own generation.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup began as an experiment in cultural translation. I hope it will continue evolving as a platform that encourages dialogue between tradition and innovation, local culture and global audiences, the physical world and the digital world.

In that sense, I believe the project's most interesting chapter may still be ahead.

From a practical perspective, the development of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup took several months of research, concept development, design, testing, and implementation.

However, I often feel that meaningful projects cannot be measured only by production schedules.

The actual design process may have lasted a few months, but the observations that inspired the project were collected over many years.

As both a designer and cultural observer, I have always been fascinated by the way language evolves. Over the years, I noticed how internet culture was creating new expressions, new forms of communication, and new social rituals. At the same time, I have long been interested in traditional Taiwanese culture, including temple practices, folk beliefs, and the ways communities preserve cultural memory.

The idea emerged when I noticed the phonetic similarity between "Kaobei," a widely used internet expression, and "Jiaobei," the traditional divination blocks used in temples. The connection appeared simple at first, but the more I explored it, the more cultural possibilities I discovered.

Once the core concept was established, the project entered a more intensive development phase. This included cultural research, storytelling, visual identity design, interactive experience planning, public engagement strategies, and communication design. One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that the project remained humorous and accessible while still showing respect for the cultural traditions that inspired it.

In many ways, the design process felt like translating between two worlds: digital culture and traditional culture.

The most time-consuming part was not creating the visuals. It was refining the idea until it felt meaningful, balanced, and authentic.

As a designer, I have learned that execution can often be completed within weeks or months, but insights take much longer to develop. They are built through observation, conversations, experiences, and curiosity accumulated over time.

So if I were to answer honestly, I would say that the project took several months to design—but more than twenty years to fully understand why it mattered.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was originally commissioned as a cultural promotion project. However, the creative concept itself emerged from a personal observation that had been developing for many years.

Throughout my career, I have been fascinated by the relationship between language, culture, and human behavior. As both a designer and educator, I often observe how people communicate in everyday life, especially in digital environments. Taiwan's internet culture is rich, humorous, and highly creative. Many online expressions that appear casual or temporary actually reveal deeper social emotions, values, and cultural characteristics.

One expression that particularly caught my attention was "Kaobei," a phrase commonly used online to express frustration, surprise, humor, or emotional release. At the same time, I was familiar with the traditional Taiwanese practice of using "Jiaobei" divination blocks in temples to seek guidance and answers.

The phonetic similarity between these two words immediately intrigued me.

What interested me was not simply the wordplay itself, but the cultural relationship hidden behind it. One belongs to digital culture, while the other belongs to traditional culture. One exists in social media conversations, while the other exists in temples and religious practices. Yet both represent a form of communication and a desire to express emotions, ask questions, and seek understanding.

This observation became the foundation of the project.

When the opportunity arose to create a cultural promotion initiative, I saw it as a chance to explore whether these seemingly unrelated worlds could be connected through design. Rather than treating traditional culture as something distant or formal, I wanted to create an experience that felt accessible, humorous, and relevant to contemporary audiences.

The project therefore became much more than a campaign. It evolved into an experiment in cultural translation—using the language of today's generation to create a dialogue with cultural traditions that have existed for centuries.

In many ways, the project was both commissioned and personally inspired.

The commission provided the opportunity, but the inspiration came from years of observing Taiwanese society, internet culture, language, and everyday life.

As a designer, I often believe that the best ideas emerge when a professional challenge meets a personal curiosity.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was exactly that kind of project.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was originally developed as a cultural promotion initiative rather than a commercial product. Its primary purpose is to encourage public participation, cultural engagement, and dialogue between contemporary digital culture and traditional cultural heritage.

At present, the project is associated with cultural and public-sector initiatives rather than commercial manufacturing. Its value lies not in physical production, but in the experience, interaction, and cultural conversations it generates.

Looking forward, I see significant potential for the project to be adapted and utilized by cultural institutions, museums, educational organizations, public exhibitions, and community engagement programs. The themes explored by the project—language, communication, cultural identity, and participation—are highly adaptable and can be presented in different formats and contexts.

Rather than focusing on selling production rights, I am more interested in expanding the project's cultural impact. Future possibilities may include traveling exhibitions, educational programs, museum collaborations, public installations, and interactive cultural experiences that allow broader audiences to engage with the concepts behind the project.

I also believe the project could serve as a model for future cultural innovation initiatives. The methodology of translating contemporary social phenomena into meaningful cultural experiences can be applied to many other aspects of language, tradition, and everyday life.

For me, the most important objective is not commercial production but cultural participation. If the project can continue inspiring conversations, encouraging engagement, and helping people reconnect with culture in new ways, then it will continue fulfilling its purpose.

In that sense, I see The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup not as a finished product, but as an evolving cultural platform with opportunities for future growth and collaboration.

I chose to design this project as a participatory cultural experience because I believe culture is best understood through engagement rather than observation.

Many cultural promotion projects rely on exhibitions, publications, or informational content to communicate cultural knowledge. While these approaches are valuable, I have often observed that contemporary audiences—especially younger generations—connect more deeply when they are invited to actively participate rather than simply receive information.

Throughout my career, I have been particularly interested in transforming cultural concepts into experiences. Whether through public installations, exhibitions, social campaigns, or interactive projects, I enjoy creating opportunities for people to become part of the story.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup explores themes such as language, communication, humor, belief, and cultural identity. These subjects are deeply connected to everyday life, so I felt that a participatory format would be much more effective than a traditional educational approach.

Another reason for choosing this format was the nature of internet culture itself. Digital culture is inherently interactive. People do not simply consume content—they comment, react, share, remix, and contribute. I wanted the project to reflect that same spirit of participation while connecting it with the communal and ritualistic aspects of traditional temple culture.

Humor was also an important consideration. I believe humor can lower barriers, invite curiosity, and encourage people to explore subjects they might otherwise ignore. By creating a playful experience, the project became more approachable and inclusive while still carrying meaningful cultural content.

More broadly, the project reflects my ongoing interest in cultural translation. I am fascinated by the challenge of taking something familiar yet overlooked and presenting it in a way that encourages people to see it differently. Participatory design is particularly effective for this purpose because it allows audiences to discover meanings for themselves rather than having those meanings explained to them.

Ultimately, I designed this type of work because I wanted culture to be experienced rather than merely discussed.

I believe people remember experiences far longer than information.

When participation, storytelling, humor, and culture come together, design can create moments that are not only educational, but also memorable, emotional, and meaningful.

That is the type of work I enjoy creating most.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was not directly inspired by a specific visual design or a single designer. Instead, it was influenced by a combination of design philosophies, cultural observations, and interdisciplinary approaches that have shaped my work throughout my career.

One of the most significant influences is the Bauhaus philosophy established by Walter Gropius. What I admire most about Bauhaus is not its visual style, but its belief that art, design, technology, and everyday life should be connected. This principle has influenced many of my projects, including The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup. Rather than treating culture as something that belongs only in museums or academic discussions, I wanted to bring cultural ideas into everyday experiences that people could actively participate in.

Another important influence comes from participatory design and experience design. I have always been interested in projects that invite audiences to become part of the work rather than simply observe it. The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was designed as a shared cultural experience where people could interact, contribute, and interpret meaning for themselves. In this sense, the project was influenced more by the idea of participation than by any specific visual reference.

The strongest influence, however, comes from Taiwanese culture itself.

Taiwan is a fascinating place where traditional beliefs, folk customs, internet culture, social media, local humor, and contemporary technology coexist. The project emerged directly from observing this cultural landscape. The relationship between "Kaobei" and "Jiaobei" could only have been discovered through close observation of Taiwanese language, social behavior, and cultural traditions.

I am also inspired by creators who successfully transform cultural phenomena into meaningful public experiences. Whether they work in design, art, architecture, theater, or public installations, I admire people who help audiences see familiar things from new perspectives.

If there is one common thread connecting all of these influences, it is the belief that design should create dialogue.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was ultimately shaped by the idea that design can connect seemingly unrelated worlds—tradition and technology, religion and social media, humor and cultural heritage, the past and the present.

In that sense, the greatest influence on the project was not a particular designer, but the culture itself.

Taiwan became both the inspiration and the co-designer of the work.

The primary audience for The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is contemporary society itself—particularly people who actively participate in digital culture while remaining connected, directly or indirectly, to cultural traditions.

At one level, the project was designed to engage younger generations who are familiar with internet language, social media communication, memes, and online communities. Many young people encounter traditional culture only occasionally, and cultural heritage can sometimes feel distant or disconnected from their daily lives. By using a familiar internet expression as the entry point, the project creates a more accessible pathway into cultural exploration.

At another level, the project also speaks to older generations who are familiar with traditional temple practices, folk beliefs, and community rituals. For these audiences, the project offers an opportunity to view cultural traditions through a contemporary lens and discover how cultural meanings continue to evolve over time.

In this sense, the project was intentionally designed as a bridge between generations.

Beyond age groups, the project also appeals to people who are interested in language, communication, cultural identity, humor, and social behavior. The themes explored by the project are universal. Regardless of cultural background, people are constantly creating new ways to express emotions, build communities, and make meaning through language.

From a broader perspective, I believe the project can resonate with anyone who has ever participated in contemporary digital culture. While the specific wordplay originates in Taiwan, the underlying themes—communication, belonging, identity, humor, and cultural evolution—are shared across societies around the world.

Ultimately, the target audience is not defined by demographics alone.

The project is designed for curious people.

People who enjoy questioning familiar assumptions.

People who appreciate humor.

People who are interested in culture.

And people who are willing to discover unexpected connections between the past and the present.

In many ways, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was created for anyone who believes that culture should be lived, shared, and continually reimagined.

What sets The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup apart is that it does not simply preserve culture—it actively translates culture.

Many cultural projects focus on documenting traditions, displaying historical artifacts, or educating audiences about the past. While these approaches are valuable, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup takes a different path. Instead of asking people to learn about culture, it invites them to participate in culture through a language and experience that already feels familiar to them.

The project transforms a contemporary internet expression into a cultural experience, creating a bridge between digital communication and traditional cultural practices. This combination is unusual because it connects two worlds that are rarely discussed together: social media culture and temple culture, online language and folk tradition, contemporary humor and cultural heritage.

Another distinctive aspect is its use of participation as a design strategy. Rather than positioning audiences as passive observers, the project encourages them to become active contributors to the experience. The meaning of the work emerges through interaction, conversation, and shared participation. In this sense, the audience becomes part of the design itself.

The project is also unique in the way it treats internet culture. Digital expressions are often considered temporary, informal, or lacking cultural significance. The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup challenges this assumption by suggesting that contemporary online language can become an important part of cultural memory and collective identity. It asks a simple but provocative question:

**What if today's internet culture becomes tomorrow's cultural heritage?**

Another distinguishing feature is the project's balance between humor and cultural depth. Humor attracts attention and lowers barriers, but beneath the playful surface lies a serious exploration of communication, identity, belief, and cultural evolution. This duality allows the project to engage diverse audiences while maintaining meaningful cultural content.

Most importantly, the project demonstrates that tradition does not need to remain fixed in the past. Culture remains alive when it continues to evolve, adapt, and generate new interpretations. By bringing together traditional divination practices and contemporary internet language, the project creates a new cultural narrative that feels both familiar and unexpected.

Ultimately, what makes The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup different is that it does not treat culture as something to be preserved behind glass.

It treats culture as something people can laugh with, interact with, reinterpret, and carry into the future.

That transformation—from preservation to participation—is what makes the project unique.

The name "The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup" emerged directly from the central idea of the project.

In Taiwan, the word "Kaobei" is a popular internet expression used to convey frustration, surprise, complaint, disbelief, or emotional release. It has become a recognizable part of contemporary digital culture and everyday communication, especially among younger generations.

At the same time, Taiwan has a long tradition of using "Jiaobei"—wooden divination blocks used in temples to seek answers, guidance, or confirmation from deities. Although these two words originate from completely different cultural contexts, their pronunciation is remarkably similar.

When I noticed this linguistic connection, I immediately became fascinated by its cultural implications.

One word belongs to the digital world.

The other belongs to the spiritual world.

One is associated with social media and online conversations.

Yet both are ultimately forms of communication.

Both are ways for people to express emotions, ask questions, and seek responses.

The name therefore became much more than a clever play on words. It became the conceptual foundation of the entire project.

By combining "Kaobei" and cultural promotion, the title reflects the project's ambition to transform a familiar internet expression into a meaningful cultural dialogue. The name itself invites curiosity and encourages people to reconsider the relationship between contemporary language and traditional culture.

Another reason I chose this title is that it captures a uniquely Taiwanese cultural phenomenon. Taiwan's culture has always evolved through adaptation, reinterpretation, and the blending of different influences. The name reflects this spirit by bringing together digital culture, folk traditions, humor, language, and public participation within a single concept.

In many ways, the title communicates the project's central question:

**Can a phrase born on the internet become part of cultural heritage?**

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup suggests that culture is not only something inherited from the past. Culture is also something we continue to create every day through language, behavior, communication, and shared experiences.

That idea is embedded directly in the name itself.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was developed through a combination of research, observation, storytelling, and design execution.

From a technical perspective, I used professional design tools such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to develop the visual identity, communication materials, and presentation assets. However, the most important tools in this project were not digital.

Cultural observation played a central role. The project originated from years of observing Taiwanese internet culture, language evolution, social media behavior, and traditional folk practices. Research was equally important, requiring an understanding of both temple divination traditions and contemporary online communication.

Before creating visual designs, I spent significant time developing narratives, cultural meanings, and audience experiences through sketches, handwritten notes, and concept mapping. Conversations with cultural practitioners, community members, and collaborators also helped shape the project.

If I were to identify the most important tools behind this work, they would be:

**Curiosity, observation, research, storytelling, and participation.**

The software helped execute the project, but these human-centered tools helped create it.

The digital tools made the project visible.

The human tools made it meaningful.

The most unique aspect of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is its ability to transform a familiar internet expression into a meaningful cultural experience.

Many projects focus on preserving traditional culture, while others celebrate contemporary digital culture. This project does both at the same time. It creates a bridge between online language and traditional folk practices, connecting two worlds that are rarely considered together.

What makes the project particularly distinctive is that it treats internet culture as something worthy of cultural reflection rather than something temporary or disposable. By linking the popular online expression "Kaobei" with the traditional practice of "Jiaobei" divination, the project invites people to reconsider how language evolves and how culture continues to be created in everyday life.

The project does not simply present culture—it allows people to participate in it. Through humor, interaction, and storytelling, audiences become part of the experience and contribute to its meaning.

Ultimately, the most unique aspect of the design is its central question:

**What if today's internet language becomes tomorrow's cultural heritage?**

That idea transformed a simple play on words into a broader conversation about culture, communication, identity, and collective memory.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was a collaborative effort involving professionals from different disciplines, which was essential to bringing the concept to life.

As the project's lead designer and creative director, I was responsible for developing the core concept, cultural strategy, storytelling framework, and overall creative direction. However, transforming an idea into a public cultural experience required contributions from many talented individuals and organizations.

The project involved collaboration with cultural promotion partners, communication teams, production specialists, event coordinators, and public-sector stakeholders. Working closely with these groups helped ensure that the project remained both culturally meaningful and accessible to a broad audience.

Because the project explored the intersection of traditional culture and contemporary digital culture, it was particularly important to exchange ideas with people who possessed different perspectives and expertise. These discussions helped refine the concept, strengthen the storytelling, and improve audience engagement.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the project was seeing how different professional backgrounds contributed to a shared goal. Designers helped shape the visual experience, communication specialists enhanced public participation, cultural stakeholders provided valuable contextual insights, and audiences themselves ultimately became part of the project through their engagement and interpretation.

I have always believed that the strongest ideas emerge through collaboration. While the original concept began with a simple cultural observation, the project grew richer through the contributions of many people with different skills, experiences, and viewpoints.

In many ways, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup demonstrates that meaningful cultural innovation is rarely the work of a single individual—it is the result of collective creativity.

Technology played an important supporting role in The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, but it was never the center of the project.

The core idea was rooted in culture, language, communication, and human participation. Technology served as a tool that helped amplify these ideas and extend their reach to wider audiences.

Digital platforms and social media were particularly important because the project itself originated from internet culture. Online communication channels enabled people to engage with the project, share experiences, participate in discussions, and contribute to the cultural conversation. In this sense, technology became a bridge connecting audiences with the project's themes.

Technology also supported the visual communication, content dissemination, and public engagement aspects of the project. It helped transform a local cultural initiative into a broader social dialogue that could reach people beyond the physical event itself.

However, I intentionally avoided making technology the focus. The project was not designed to showcase new technologies; it was designed to explore how people communicate, express emotions, and create cultural meaning in the digital age.

For me, the most interesting role of technology is not what it can do, but what it can help people do together.

In The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, technology enabled participation, conversation, and cultural exchange, but the true value of the project came from the people who engaged with it.

Ultimately, technology amplified the experience, but culture and human connection gave it meaning.

Yes. Although The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is a cultural and communication design project rather than a scientific study, it was strongly informed by observation, cultural analysis, and qualitative research.

The project began with long-term observation of Taiwanese internet culture and language use. I was particularly interested in how certain online expressions evolve into shared social behaviors and become part of everyday communication. The popularity of the term "Kaobei" provided an opportunity to explore how digital language reflects contemporary emotions, values, and cultural identity.

In parallel, I conducted research into traditional Taiwanese temple culture, especially the use of "Jiaobei" divination blocks as a form of communication and guidance. Understanding the historical and cultural significance of this practice was essential to ensuring that the project remained respectful while introducing a contemporary interpretation.

The design process also involved analyzing audience behavior and participation patterns. Because the project was intended to engage diverse age groups, I considered how different audiences might respond to humor, cultural references, and interactive experiences. This helped shape both the communication strategy and the overall user experience.

In many ways, the project can be seen as a form of cultural research through design. Rather than treating research as a separate activity, research became part of the creative process itself. Observations from daily life, social media interactions, language evolution, and cultural traditions all contributed to the final concept.

The most important insight from this research was that culture is constantly evolving. Language, especially online language, is not only a communication tool but also a reflection of collective identity and social behavior.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was ultimately designed as an exploration of that relationship between contemporary digital culture and traditional cultural heritage.

One of the biggest challenges in developing The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was transforming a familiar internet expression into a meaningful cultural experience.

At first glance, "Kaobei" is often associated with online complaints, emotional reactions, and humorous expressions. Many people view it as casual internet slang rather than something worthy of cultural discussion. The challenge was finding a way to reveal the deeper social and cultural meanings hidden behind this everyday language.

Another challenge was avoiding a purely humorous interpretation. While humor played an important role in attracting attention and encouraging participation, I wanted the project to go beyond a simple joke or wordplay. The goal was to create an experience that encouraged people to reflect on how language evolves, how communities communicate, and how contemporary culture is continuously shaped through everyday interactions.

The project also required balancing accessibility with cultural depth. It needed to be immediately understandable to a broad audience while still offering meaningful insights for people interested in culture, communication, and social behavior. Achieving this balance required careful refinement of the concept, storytelling, and audience experience.

A further challenge was demonstrating that contemporary internet language can carry cultural value. Digital expressions are often viewed as temporary or disposable, yet many of them reveal important aspects of collective identity, social emotions, and generational experiences. The project sought to highlight these connections and encourage audiences to reconsider the cultural significance of everyday language.

Perhaps the most rewarding challenge was transforming a simple linguistic observation into a broader conversation about culture and communication.

What began as a familiar internet phrase eventually became a project about identity, participation, collective memory, and the evolution of language itself.

In the end, the challenge was not designing an object or a campaign.

It was demonstrating that even the most ordinary words can reveal extraordinary cultural stories.

I decided to submit The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup to an international design competition because I was curious about whether a project rooted in Taiwanese culture could resonate with a global audience.

The project originated from a uniquely Taiwanese cultural phenomenon, combining internet language, everyday communication, and cultural identity. While these references are highly familiar to local audiences, I wanted to explore whether the underlying themes could be understood beyond Taiwan.

At its core, the project is not only about a specific phrase or cultural context. It is about language, communication, collective identity, humor, and the ways culture evolves through everyday interactions. These are universal human experiences, even if they are expressed differently across societies.

International design competitions provide an opportunity to test ideas beyond their original environment. They allow designers to discover whether a concept can communicate across languages, cultures, and geographical boundaries. I found this possibility particularly exciting because the project itself is about communication and cultural translation.

Another reason for participating was to introduce a contemporary aspect of Taiwanese culture to a broader audience. Much of the world's understanding of culture focuses on historical traditions, but I believe contemporary digital culture is also an important part of cultural identity. Through this project, I hoped to share a small piece of how Taiwanese society communicates, creates meaning, and expresses itself today.

Finally, I see international competitions as valuable opportunities for reflection. Preparing a project for an international audience forces designers to clarify their ideas, articulate their intentions, and evaluate the broader relevance of their work.

For me, submitting this project was not simply about recognition.

It was about asking a question:

**Can a design inspired by a local cultural phenomenon spark a meaningful conversation on a global stage?**

The positive response to the project suggests that culture may be local, but the human experiences behind it are often universal.

One of the most important lessons I learned from this project was that culture is not something fixed in the past—it is something continuously created in the present.

Before developing The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, I often thought about cultural preservation in terms of history, traditions, and inherited practices. Through this project, I came to realize that contemporary language, internet culture, social interactions, and everyday behaviors are also part of our cultural landscape. Culture evolves every day through the ways people communicate and share experiences.

The project also strengthened my understanding of cultural translation. As designers, we often act as translators between different worlds. In this case, I was translating between digital culture and cultural heritage, between humor and reflection, and between different generations of audiences. The experience taught me that successful design is not about simplifying complexity, but about creating meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.

Another important lesson was the value of participation. The project reminded me that people connect more deeply with experiences they can actively engage with. Rather than simply presenting information, design becomes more powerful when audiences are invited to contribute, interpret, and become part of the story themselves.

On a personal level, the project reinforced my belief that observation remains one of the designer's most important skills. A simple linguistic observation eventually grew into a large cultural conversation. This reminded me that meaningful ideas are often hidden in ordinary places, waiting to be noticed.

Perhaps the most valuable insight was realizing that even the most everyday aspects of life can contain cultural significance.

What many people see as a casual internet expression became an opportunity to discuss language, identity, communication, and collective memory.

As a designer, that experience encouraged me to look more carefully at the world around me and to trust that meaningful ideas can emerge from unexpected places.

In many ways, this project did not just change the way I design.

It changed the way I observe culture itself.

If there is one final idea I would like people to take away from The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, it is that culture is not something distant from our everyday lives.

We often think of culture as something preserved in museums, historical sites, archives, or textbooks. However, culture is also created through the words we use, the stories we tell, the jokes we share, and the ways we communicate with one another every day.

This project began with a simple observation about language, but it ultimately became an exploration of how contemporary society continuously creates new forms of cultural expression. What may seem ordinary today can become part of collective memory tomorrow.

As a designer, I am deeply interested in helping people rediscover familiar things from new perspectives. I believe design has the power to reveal cultural value in places where people may not expect to find it.

The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is not simply about a phrase, an event, or a campaign. It is about encouraging people to look more carefully at the world around them and recognize that culture is alive, evolving, and constantly being shaped by human interaction.

Perhaps the most important message of the project is this:

**Culture is not only inherited. Culture is also created.**

Every generation contributes new stories, new language, and new ways of understanding the world.

As designers, we have the opportunity—and perhaps the responsibility—to help make those stories visible.

If this project encourages even a few people to see contemporary culture with greater curiosity and appreciation, then it has achieved its purpose.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project lies in the word itself. In Taiwanese vernacular culture, the expression “Kaobei” is widely recognized as an emotional exclamation used to express surprise, frustration, disbelief, or humor. At the same time, the final syllable, “bei,” is a homophone of the Chinese word for cup. This linguistic coincidence provided an unexpected opportunity to transform language into an object while preserving its cultural meaning.The project also reflects a deeper observation about everyday life. Ordinary people often have to "drink" many of life's frustrations, pressures, and disappointments. By placing the expression onto a functional cup, the design transforms a familiar emotional release into a daily ritual. The act of drinking becomes a subtle metaphor for how people process and cope with life's challenges, often with humor and resilience.From a design perspective, I was also inspired by the Bauhaus principle that materials should actively contribute to function and meaning. Rather than treating ceramics merely as a decorative surface, the porcelain cup became an integral part of the communication experience. The material's durability, tactile quality, and everyday usability allowed language to be experienced physically rather than simply read visually.This unexpected combination of vernacular language, functional design, and cultural symbolism generated strong engagement both inside museums and across social media. Visitors were often surprised to encounter a phrase commonly found in everyday conversations within a museum environment. That surprise frequently evolved into laughter, discussion, and social sharing.In many ways, the project helped museums communicate in a more approachable and human manner. Instead of speaking only through formal institutional narratives, the museum could engage visitors through a language they already knew and used. The expression functioned almost like a friend breaking the ice, creating an immediate emotional connection between cultural institutions and the public.Interestingly, “Kaobei” itself often operates as a contemporary exclamation of surprise. When visitors encountered the cup, they frequently reacted with the very emotion embedded within the phrase—astonishment, amusement, and curiosity. This created a playful loop in which the language, the object, and the audience's response became inseparable parts of the experience.Ultimately, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup demonstrates how everyday language can move beyond communication and become a living cultural medium—one that bridges digital culture, physical interaction, humor, memory, and social participation.

One of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was that the project required language to be treated not simply as information, but as a material that had to coexist with a physical object.In conventional graphic design, typography is typically experienced on flat surfaces such as screens, posters, or printed media. Designers have considerable freedom in terms of scale, detail, color, and composition. However, once language is transferred onto a three-dimensional ceramic object, entirely different considerations emerge. The typography must adapt to curvature, viewing angles, tactile interaction, and the technical limitations of ceramic production.The project began with my observation of Taiwanese vernacular culture and the evolution of everyday language in the digital era. Expressions such as "Kaobei" are no longer merely words; they have become emotional signals, conversational markers, and a form of contemporary social grammar. My goal was to transform this living linguistic phenomenon into a tangible object while preserving its familiarity, humor, and communicative power.The realization of the ceramic object itself was made possible through collaboration with ceramic artist Li Ting-Yi, founder of Yeeee Pottery Studio in Taiwan. Based on my design concept, visual system, and communication framework, Li translated the two-dimensional design into a handcrafted ceramic form and oversaw the shaping, glazing, and kiln-firing processes. This collaboration brought together two distinct yet complementary disciplines: communication design and ceramic craftsmanship.Working closely with the studio deepened my understanding of how material processes influence communication. Certain visual details that appeared effective in graphic form required adjustment when translated into porcelain. Factors such as curvature, shrinkage during firing, surface texture, decal application, and viewing distance all affected how the vernacular expression would ultimately be perceived and experienced. The final outcome emerged through an ongoing dialogue between design intention and material reality.The production process involved ceramic slip casting, precision decal transfer printing, and high-temperature kiln firing. Each stage imposed constraints that directly influenced the visual development of the project. Fine typographic details could become distorted during firing, overly complex compositions risked losing clarity on curved surfaces, and the expression had to remain visually legible from multiple angles during everyday use. As a result, the visual language evolved toward stronger forms, simplified structures, and carefully balanced compositions capable of surviving both technical production requirements and repeated daily interaction.At the same time, I wanted to preserve the spontaneity and emotional authenticity of vernacular language. Everyday expressions derive much of their communicative power from their informality and immediacy. The challenge was finding a balance between precision and authenticity—creating a design system that could be reproduced consistently through ceramic production while retaining the humor, familiarity, and cultural energy embedded within the original expression.This process led me to think beyond typography as a purely visual discipline. The project became an exploration of how language behaves when it occupies physical space. Once a phrase is permanently embedded onto a porcelain surface, it is no longer experienced only through reading. It becomes something people hold, touch, photograph, share online, discuss with others, and integrate into everyday rituals.I was particularly interested in the relationship between material and meaning. Inspired by Bauhaus principles, I believe materials should actively contribute to communication rather than merely serve as passive carriers of information. In this project, porcelain was not simply a surface for language. Its durability, weight, tactile quality, and everyday functionality transformed a temporary digital expression into a lasting cultural artifact.This fusion of material craft and linguistic inquiry suggests exciting possibilities for the future of language-based product design. As contemporary communication increasingly takes place within digital environments, there is growing value in re-materializing language through physical objects. Products can become platforms for storytelling, cultural preservation, social interaction, and identity formation.Rather than viewing language as something confined to screens or printed text, designers may begin to treat language itself as a design material—one capable of shaping experiences, building communities, and carrying cultural memory across both physical and digital contexts.In this sense, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is not merely a ceramic product. It is an experiment in how words, materials, craftsmanship, and everyday rituals can converge to create new forms of cultural communication.

One of the central ideas behind The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is that vernacular language deserves to be viewed as a legitimate part of contemporary culture rather than merely as informal speech.Expressions such as "Kaobei" are often categorized as slang, internet language, or casual conversation. Because of this, they are frequently overlooked within formal cultural discourse. Yet from my perspective, these everyday expressions reveal how people genuinely communicate, express emotions, build relationships, and negotiate social identity. They are living cultural artifacts that reflect the values, humor, frustrations, and creativity of a particular time and place.What fascinated me was the possibility of placing such language within a museum context. Museums have traditionally been associated with preserving history, cultural heritage, and collective memory. I wondered whether contemporary vernacular language could also be interpreted as a form of cultural heritage—one that is still evolving and actively used by society.A key factor in making this exploration possible was the support and vision of Director Eddie-Lai of the New Taipei City Pinglin Tea Museum. I am deeply grateful for his recognition of the concept and his willingness to support an unconventional project that brought everyday language into a museum environment. His openness allowed the idea to move beyond a conceptual proposal and develop into a tangible cultural product. Without that institutional trust and encouragement, the project would have been far more difficult to realize.Interestingly, the museum setting transformed the way people perceived the expression. Outside the museum, "Kaobei" might simply be regarded as an everyday exclamation. Inside the museum, however, visitors began to reflect on its linguistic origins, cultural meanings, and role in contemporary Taiwanese communication. The phrase did not lose its humor; rather, it gained an additional layer of cultural significance.I believe this is why the project succeeds in making vernacular language feel both emotionally compelling and culturally dignified. It does not attempt to sanitize or formalize the expression. Instead, it respects the expression for what it already is—a shared social language created collectively by ordinary people. The design simply provides a new context through which people can appreciate it.Humor also plays an important role. The project demonstrates that cultural engagement does not always need to be serious or academic. Laughter can be a powerful entry point into cultural reflection. Many visitors first reacted with surprise or amusement, but that initial emotional response often led to deeper conversations about language, identity, and everyday life.Ultimately, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup suggests that culture is not only preserved in historical artifacts or official narratives. It is also embedded within the words people use every day. By bringing vernacular language into a museum retail environment, the project creates a bridge between institutional culture and lived experience, allowing visitors to recognize that their own language, memories, and social interactions are themselves valuable parts of contemporary cultural heritage.

One of the greatest challenges of the project was that vernacular language is inherently fluid, emotional, and often inconsistent. Unlike formal written language, everyday expressions evolve organically through social interaction. Their communicative power comes precisely from their spontaneity, informality, and unpredictability.If I had treated the expression purely as typography, much of its cultural vitality would have been lost. At the same time, if I had preserved every aspect of its raw and unstructured nature, it would have been difficult to establish the consistency required for series production and long-term brand development. The project therefore required a careful balance between emotional authenticity and design systemization.The process began with observation rather than design. Drawing from years of experience in advertising and communication design, I collected examples of how vernacular expressions appeared across social media conversations, online forums, digital communication platforms, public signage, and everyday speech. Rather than focusing solely on the literal meaning of each phrase, I paid close attention to the emotions, social contexts, and communicative functions associated with them.I discovered that expressions such as "Kaobei" operate less like conventional vocabulary and more like emotional signals. Depending on context, the same phrase can express surprise, frustration, disbelief, amusement, admiration, sadness, or affection. Preserving this emotional flexibility became one of the central design objectives.A particularly important design strategy involved the transformation of the Chinese character itself. Many Taiwanese vernacular expressions function as exclamations that communicate surprise, frustration, disappointment, admiration, or emotional release. I noticed that many of these expressions contain the "口" (mouth) radical, a component historically associated with speaking, vocalization, and human communication.Rather than treating the characters as static graphic elements, I reinterpreted the "口" radical as the body of the cup itself. In other words, the vessel became an extension of the character. This approach allowed the object and the language to become structurally inseparable. The cup was no longer simply carrying the word; it became part of the word's visual and symbolic construction.At the same time, each expression was developed with its own visual personality. While maintaining consistency across the series, I emphasized the distinctive emotional characteristics embedded within each character and phrase. Expressions associated with astonishment, humor, frustration, admiration, sadness, or melancholy were carefully analyzed and translated into different visual accents, compositional balances, and typographic emphases. This ensured that every cup retained the emotional tone of the original expression while remaining part of a coherent design system.Visually, I intentionally avoided highly decorative typographic treatments. Instead, I sought a visual language that felt familiar, direct, and conversational. Influenced by my background in Chinese calligraphy, vernacular visual culture, and advertising communication, I wanted the typography to retain a sense of spontaneity while remaining clear and reproducible. The final forms underwent multiple rounds of refinement to ensure that they could function effectively across different scales, surfaces, and production methods without losing their recognizable character.Another important decision was to focus on communicative essence rather than literal representation. Rather than attempting to visually imitate internet slang or digital aesthetics, I distilled the expression into a cleaner visual system capable of surviving translation into ceramic form. This approach allowed the project to maintain the emotional energy of everyday speech while achieving the precision required for decal printing, kiln firing, and repeated production.Throughout the development process, I constantly evaluated whether each design decision made the expression feel more authentic or more artificial. Whenever the design became overly polished, it risked losing the humor and immediacy that made the phrase meaningful in the first place. Conversely, whenever it became too informal, it risked losing coherence as a cultural product and communication platform. The final design emerged through continuous adjustment between these two poles.Ultimately, the success of the system came from treating vernacular language not as a problem to be corrected, but as a cultural resource to be interpreted. Rather than imposing order onto everyday speech, the design sought to reveal the structure already embedded within it.The resulting visual system preserves the raw communicative energy of vernacular culture while providing the consistency, clarity, and production precision necessary for a scalable design series. In this sense, the project demonstrates that even the most informal forms of language can become meaningful design materials when approached with respect, observation, and cultural sensitivity.More importantly, the project suggests that language itself can become a form of product architecture. By transforming linguistic structures into physical forms, communication is no longer limited to reading or speaking. It becomes something people can hold, use, share, and experience in everyday life. The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup demonstrates how typography, language, emotion, and object design can converge to create a new model of cultural communication—one that preserves the vitality of everyday speech while giving it a lasting physical presence.

The underlying philosophy behind The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is not about a specific word, phrase, or even a single cultural expression. It is about understanding how ordinary people use language to make themselves heard.For many years, I have been fascinated by vernacular culture and the visual traces it leaves within everyday environments. One of my personal research interests involves documenting handwritten messages created by ordinary people throughout Taiwan. These are not official signs or professionally designed graphics. They are spontaneous expressions written by residents and placed outside their homes, shops, or neighborhoods.Some are warnings such as "No Parking." Others express frustration, asking people not to smoke nearby. Some politely request cooperation from neighbors, while others warmly welcome visitors. Despite their simplicity, these handwritten messages reveal something profound: they are acts of communication driven by real social needs.Over the years, I have collected more than one thousand photographs of these vernacular handwritten signs. What interests me is not only their visual form, but also what they represent. Each message reflects an individual's attempt to negotiate everyday life, express emotions, solve problems, build relationships, or establish a sense of belonging within a community.This observation became one of the foundations of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup.From my perspective, vernacular language is one of the most democratic forms of cultural expression. It is created collectively rather than institutionally. It evolves naturally rather than being formally prescribed. Most importantly, it reflects how people actually live, communicate, and experience the world.Because the project is rooted in this broader understanding of everyday communication, it was never intended to be limited to a single Taiwanese expression. "Kaobei" is simply one example of a much larger phenomenon. The real design framework is the process of identifying culturally meaningful language, understanding its emotional and social functions, and transforming it into a tangible object that people can experience in daily life.This is why I believe the system has the potential to expand across different linguistic communities and cultural contexts. Every society possesses its own vernacular expressions, colloquialisms, local humor, emotional phrases, and forms of everyday speech. These expressions often carry cultural meanings that are difficult to translate directly, yet they play an essential role in shaping collective identity.In Japan, the system might draw upon local dialects and everyday expressions that reflect regional identity. In Europe, it could emerge from neighborhood sayings, community slogans, or colloquial phrases passed between generations. In other parts of Asia, it might evolve through internet language, contemporary slang, or hybrid forms of communication that combine local traditions with digital culture.The objective is not to export Taiwanese culture, but to provide a framework through which different cultures can rediscover and celebrate their own linguistic heritage.Ultimately, I envision The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup evolving into a broader cultural design platform—one that explores how language, memory, identity, and material culture intersect. By transforming everyday expressions into tangible experiences, the project demonstrates that language is more than a tool for communication. It is a living archive of collective experience.Whether the expression originates from Taiwan, Japan, Europe, or elsewhere, the underlying principle remains the same: ordinary language deserves to be seen, remembered, and celebrated as an important part of cultural life.

My aspiration for the next phase of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is to expand it from a single product series into a broader platform for cultural storytelling, linguistic preservation, and public engagement.Although the project began with a specific Taiwanese vernacular expression, I have always viewed it as part of a larger exploration into how everyday language reflects collective memory, social identity, and cultural values. The Gold A' Design Award has provided an invaluable opportunity to bring this conversation to a wider international audience, and I hope the project can continue evolving beyond its original form.One direction I am particularly interested in is expanding the series to include a wider range of vernacular expressions drawn from different regions, generations, and social communities. Language is constantly changing, and each expression captures a unique moment within cultural history. By documenting and materializing these expressions through design, the project can serve as a living archive of contemporary culture rather than a static collection of products.This vision is closely connected to my long-term research into Taiwanese vernacular handwriting and everyday communication. Over the years, I have collected more than one thousand photographs of handwritten signs created by ordinary citizens throughout Taiwan. These messages—whether they prohibit parking, request consideration from neighbors, complain about second-hand smoke, welcome visitors, or simply express personal opinions—represent authentic voices from everyday life. To me, these handwritten messages are not merely signs; they are visual records of how ordinary people communicate, negotiate social relationships, and respond to the realities of daily life. I believe there is enormous cultural value in preserving these forms of grassroots communication before they gradually disappear.Beyond vernacular expressions, this vision also extends into my broader exploration of language as cultural heritage. In parallel with The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, I have been developing interactive design projects based on rare and forgotten Chinese characters. While vernacular expressions document how language evolves and adapts within contemporary society, rare characters preserve cultural memories, historical contexts, and alternative ways of understanding the world that risk disappearing from everyday use.Although these projects operate in different linguistic territories, they share the same underlying objective: making language visible, tangible, and experiential. One explores the living language people use today, while the other reconnects audiences with linguistic forms that have gradually faded from collective awareness. Together, they form a broader design inquiry into how communication, culture, and identity can be preserved, reactivated, and reimagined through contemporary design.Beyond Taiwan, I also hope the framework can inspire similar explorations in other linguistic and cultural communities. Every culture possesses expressions that are difficult to translate but deeply meaningful to those who use them. The future of the project may involve collaborations with museums, cultural institutions, designers, researchers, and local communities to transform these expressions into tangible experiences that celebrate cultural diversity while encouraging dialogue across cultures.At the same time, I want to ensure that The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup remains a functional communication platform rather than becoming merely a collectible object. The strength of the project lies in its ability to spark conversations. When people encounter the cup, they often smile, tell stories, share memories, take photographs, and discuss the meaning behind the expression. These interactions are just as important as the object itself.In this sense, the project exists simultaneously in physical and digital spaces. The ceramic cup serves as the material artifact, while social media, exhibitions, museum environments, and public conversations allow the cultural narrative to continue evolving. I believe this hybrid model reflects the reality of contemporary communication, where cultural experiences move fluidly between objects, communities, and digital networks.Ultimately, my goal is not simply to create more products. It is to build a sustainable cultural design system that helps people recognize the value of everyday language. If future generations can look back at these expressions and better understand how people communicated, joked, complained, connected, and expressed themselves in a particular period of history, then the project will have succeeded as both a cultural artifact and a communication platform.For me, the future of The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is not about preserving language in a museum case. It is about keeping language alive through participation, conversation, interaction, and shared cultural experience.

If there is one lesson I hope emerging designers can learn from The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup, it is that meaningful design often begins by paying attention to things that others overlook.Many young designers believe innovation must come from entirely new technologies, complex systems, or extraordinary ideas. However, this project taught me that some of the most powerful design opportunities already exist within everyday life—in the words people speak, the expressions they share, the signs they write, and the experiences they encounter every day.The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup was built upon a simple observation: ordinary language carries extraordinary cultural meaning. By taking something familiar and often overlooked and presenting it through a new perspective, the project was able to create emotional resonance, social engagement, and cultural dialogue. This reinforced my belief that design does not always need to invent something new. Sometimes it simply needs to reveal the value of what already exists.As both a designer and educator, I have become increasingly interested in how people experience design across different forms of representation. Recently, I conducted a collaborative project in which university students co-created illustrations together with adults with Down syndrome. The creative outcomes were presented in multiple stages, including hand-drawn sketches, digital visualizations, AI-generated mockups, and finally physical ceramic cups produced from the designs.What fascinated me was the response from nearly one hundred participating students. Although they appreciated the digital renderings and AI-generated simulations, the overwhelming majority reported a significantly stronger emotional connection when they encountered the final physical cup. Holding the object, feeling its weight, seeing their design transformed into a real artifact, and sharing it with others created an experience that digital representations alone could not fully replicate.This finding reinforced something I have long believed: in an increasingly digital world, physical experiences matter more than ever.Design is not only about visual communication; it is also about creating moments of emotional connection. People remember what they can touch, use, share, and experience. The physical object becomes a bridge between imagination and reality.For designers working at the intersection of culture, language, and daily life, I believe the challenge is not simply to communicate information. It is to create experiences that people genuinely feel. Technology can help us generate ideas, visualize possibilities, and accelerate production, but meaning ultimately emerges through human experience.The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup succeeds not because it presents a clever phrase on a ceramic surface, but because it transforms language into something people can hold, use, laugh about, discuss, photograph, and remember. The design becomes part of everyday life.If I could offer one piece of advice to emerging designers, it would be this: stay close to people, stay curious about ordinary culture, and never underestimate the emotional power of tangible experiences.In a world increasingly dominated by screens and algorithms, the designs that endure may be those that help people feel something real.

One of the core principles that guides my work is what I describe as "creating the unfamiliar" and "designing for everyday emotional resonance."I have always been interested in situations where familiar things are placed into unfamiliar contexts. When people encounter something they think they already know, but experience it in an unexpected way, they pause. That moment of pause creates curiosity, reflection, and often a deeper emotional connection. For me, design begins in that moment of surprise.This philosophy played a central role in The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup. The project intentionally places a vernacular expression—informal, emotional, and often associated with everyday conversation—onto a material traditionally associated with permanence, craftsmanship, ritual, and cultural value. Rather than avoiding this contrast, I wanted to amplify it.The tension between the language and the material is precisely what gives the project its communicative power.Language is inherently transient. Expressions emerge, evolve, gain popularity, and sometimes disappear within a generation. Contemporary digital culture accelerates this process even further. New phrases spread rapidly through social media and messaging platforms, often existing only briefly before being replaced by new forms of expression.Porcelain represents the opposite condition. It is durable, tangible, and capable of surviving for decades or even centuries. Historically, ceramics have served as vessels for preserving cultural memory, artistic expression, and everyday rituals across generations.Bringing these two elements together created an intentional friction between permanence and impermanence.When visitors encounter the cup, they often experience a moment of cognitive surprise. The phrase feels contemporary, spontaneous, and conversational, while the material feels enduring and almost ceremonial. This contrast encourages people to reconsider both. The language appears more culturally significant, while the ceramic object becomes more approachable, humorous, and connected to contemporary life.At a deeper level, I believe this contrast reflects how culture itself operates. Culture is constantly changing, yet it is also continuously preserved. New expressions emerge every day, but they are built upon accumulated histories, memories, and shared experiences. The cup becomes a meeting point between these two conditions.My interest in vernacular culture is also connected to a broader design philosophy. For many years, designers were encouraged to think globally and execute globally. While international perspectives remain valuable, I increasingly believe that thinking locally and designing locally can reveal entirely different ways of understanding the world. The more deeply we engage with local language, local humor, local habits, and local experiences, the more universal the resulting human stories often become.The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup is deeply rooted in Taiwanese vernacular culture, yet audiences from different countries often recognize something familiar within it. They may not understand the exact phrase, but they understand the emotional experience of shared language, humor, frustration, surprise, and everyday communication. In this way, the local becomes a pathway to the universal.Ultimately, the experience of holding the cup is not simply visual or linguistic. It is sensory, emotional, and cultural. The weight of the porcelain, the tactile quality of the surface, and the familiarity of the expression all work together to create a layered experience. People are not merely reading a phrase; they are physically engaging with a fragment of contemporary culture.For me, that is the true value of the project. It demonstrates that everyday language, when combined with thoughtful material design, can become both a cultural artifact and a deeply human experience. Through the deliberate tension between what is temporary and what endures, the project invites people to rediscover the extraordinary meanings hidden within ordinary life.

The development of typography for The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup required a fundamentally different way of thinking compared to conventional graphic design.In two-dimensional design, typography is often experienced through visual observation alone. Whether on a screen, poster, publication, or advertisement, the designer primarily considers composition, hierarchy, readability, and visual impact within a fixed frame. The audience encounters the design through sight.A cup, however, is not viewed in the same way. It is held, rotated, touched, lifted, washed, stored, photographed, shared, and repeatedly used throughout daily life. The object is experienced through both visual perception and physical interaction. This meant that the typography could no longer function as a purely graphic element; it had to become part of the object itself.This challenge led me to reconsider the relationship between language and form. Rather than simply placing words onto the surface of a cup, I sought to create a more integrated dialogue between typography, material, and function. The visual language had to remain legible from multiple viewing angles, adapt to the curvature of the ceramic surface, and maintain its emotional character while enduring repeated use.One of the most important design decisions involved simplifying the visual structure without reducing its communicative power. Vernacular expressions derive much of their effectiveness from immediacy and familiarity. If the typography became overly decorative, the expression risked losing its conversational quality. Conversely, if it became too neutral, it would lose the humor, emotional energy, and cultural specificity that made it meaningful in the first place.The transformation of the "口"(Mouth) radical into the cup body itself became a key strategy in this process. Rather than treating typography as something applied onto the object, the design allowed the object to become part of the language. The cup and the character were conceived as a unified visual system. This approach helped preserve the communicative power of the original expression while creating a stronger relationship between language and everyday use.At the same time, each vernacular phrase was carefully analyzed for its emotional qualities. Expressions associated with surprise, frustration, humor, admiration, or melancholy were given distinct visual emphases while remaining part of a coherent family of forms. This allowed the series to retain both consistency and individual personality.The project was also strongly influenced by Bauhaus principles. More than a century later, I still believe one of the most enduring lessons of Bauhaus is that design should enter everyday life and be genuinely used by people. Good design should not remain confined to galleries, exhibitions, or theoretical discussions. It should participate in daily routines and become part of lived experience.This belief guided many of the decisions behind The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup. The goal was never simply to create an object that people would admire. It was to create an object that people would repeatedly use. Every time someone pours tea, drinks coffee, shares a photograph, or laughs at the expression printed on the cup, the design becomes active once again.In this sense, typography is no longer a static visual message. It becomes part of an ongoing relationship between object, language, and user. The meaning of the expression is continually renewed through everyday interaction.Ultimately, The Kaobei Cultural Promotion Cup demonstrates that language can extend beyond reading and become a lived experience. When typography, material, and function are fully integrated, design gains the ability not only to communicate information but also to create memory, participation, and emotional connection. For me, this is where the true power of communication design resides—not on the page or screen alone, but in the moments when design becomes part of everyday life.