When we first went interviewing Professor Pang-Soong Lin at National Taiwan Normal University, he told us learning is important and that every designer is looking for his/her own style. However, how do we differentiate designing from painting? Designers have to think for others while painters don’t. “Functionality, methodology, and working pattern are the key issues a designer should acknowledge in the first place. Designing is methodical and logical by which the designer follows the designated pattern and moves forward step by step, till the destination has been reached.” Lin mentioned.

　　Professor Lin believes the unity of knowledge and practice--- designing is initiated by thought followed by the appropriate and efficient method--- the Lin’s Secret Method. To design is to help people solve problems. His statement clearly describes his career over the years: “The art of design is to realize ourselves while solving the problem.”

　　In 1986, Lin decided to return to NTNU starting from working as a teaching assistant in the Department of Fine Arts. Time was hard, one day he ran across a poster in Hong Kong subway, the poster depicted a predicament when a big goldfish got trapped in a small fish tank with the headline said it all: “Why do you trap yourself like this way when you don’t belong in the tank.” Suddenly, his depressed mind was relieved.

　　Lin indicates that “design industry is sectioned by upstream, midstream, and downstream divisions with the upstream one driving the other two. I’m more like the role of upstream division, and that's why I got involved in CIS.” Turning over a new leaf, starting from 1988, he shifted his focus from the teaching position to design practice and promotion. These include traveling to China regularly as well as participating in the international design exhibitions which had made his name and achievement known around the world.

　　Lin, who travels regularly around the world, still bears Taiwan in mind despite being in the foreign land. Therefore, he would send a postcard (with sketch of Formosa on it) to Taiwan from the place he was visiting. He called the postcards he sent back “homeletters of Taiwan”. The contents of the postcards were often in forms of solid geometrical images, or other pictorial symbols. Bearing the postmarks, the postcards were meant to witness the time and space in which it got sent out and also to relieve Lin’s homesickness. In addition, touched by the beauty of Taiwan, since 2005 Lin had been carried out a series of hand-painted art creation which display the local culture and nuances of our beautiful homeland.

 

The picture showing Professor Lin’s course of artistic creation.