CARIliu–华人设计师的骄傲！

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在设计方面，电脑3D建模和设计方面的理论、原理我都还可以，只是手绘（Sketch）差强人意，自己感觉拿不出手，因为学校白天没有电，大好时光不能浪费了，在看书、找工作之余必须抽时间练练手绘了。 LD早就买了刘传凯的《产品创意设计》一书，我以前也有翻看过，只是翻翻，没什么收获，现在我要好好的学习学习了。下午静下心看了一些，其他的先不说，就光CARIliu的“About Me”，看完之后，另我十分感动，收获不小，感觉CARIliu有点象我的经历(哈哈，不要踩我.)，我真的要向他学习了！

以下是刘传凯自己在他的《产品创意设计》上的英文介绍，拿来大家一起研究、学习：

I was born in Taiwan and finished my Junior College degree of Mechanical Engineering in Taipei. After college, I joined Army to serve my duty for two years. Life in Army was very tough in general. People from all over the country having extremely different background have to live and work together. Some people were very hard to deal with and always wanted to take advantage of others or bullied around. I did not have other choices but to live with it and tried my best to survive. Many people say the Army turns a boy to a man. I believe it because my survival skills and strong wills that I have trained from the Army get me though all these years till today. I found out Industrial Design by accident when I was fifteen years old. My uncle loved books and he always brought books and foreign magazines to us children. One time he brought in a magazine called Design World. I was very attracted by all the pictures and articles in the magazine. One of the articles was written about a design firm in Australia. Designers worked in a bright and spacious modern glass house drawing stuff I had never seen. I pictured myself sitting in the room and sketching… My dream started from that moment. I was not able to study Industrial Design because there were only a few univercity having ID major and my study grade was not good enough to for me get in any of them. So I studied Mechanical Engineering instead because I thought it was probably close enough to Industrial Design. Obviously, I was wrong. I still carried my dream after I retired from Army. I took a TOFEL test but failed to pass and to be accepted by any art school in USA. My parents were thinking about moving to Canada at that time. Therefore, they decided to send me oversea and see if I could get in a good art school after taking some ESL(English as second language) courses. Somehow I knew this was my last shot to catch for my dream and I could not let it slip away. Life in Vancouver Canada was so different from where I grew up. Everything was so new and interesting to me. Besides the school class, I attended many after school activities. That really helped me to open up myself by socializing with people from different countries and understanding their culture better. Influenced by the beautiful city and friendly people there, I started to become a more optimistic person. I could not remember how many times I failed on TOFEL test before I finally got accepted by an art school in San Francisco, California College of Art and Crafts. The good thing about this college was minimal portfolio requirement for students entry. I moved to Oakland and share a house with two other students as well as the house owner. Most of my classes I of the first semester were art foundations. I worked extremely hard and spent lots of time on my homework and projects. I only slept three to four hours a day and countless nights I worked all nights without any sleep. I still remember in the first Basic Drawing Class the instructor asked every student to draw the still objects so he could tell students’ skill lever. I was too embarrassed to show my work because my drawing was so awful compared with other students’ work. Well, I was probably the oldest student in that class and my drawing stank. I whispered to myself that I could not lose my face and I had to work on my foundation skill extra hard. My hard work finally paid off. The end of that semester I got an A-from my highly respected professor who had only given out three A s to his students during his twenty-year teaching career according to the seniors. Actually, I thought my work was not necessarily the best in the class but my tremendous improvement was definitely recognized. For other studio classes, I was able to learn fast and to do quite well. The end of my freshman year, there was an annual All-Collage-Student Competition for scholarship. I was suggested to try for an entry by a friend. I wasn’t confident enough to submit my work when I found out I was going to compete with more than one hundred students but I did it anyway. Two weeks later, I got a letter from the scholarship committee to inform me that I had won the first prize. I could not believe what I saw. I was so happy and excited and kept saying I did it to myself. This experience was one of the important highlights in my life because this honor was the first major achievement through my entire student life, not to mention I was a foreign student trying to study an unfamiliar subject. CARIliu--华人设计师的骄傲！ I finally started Industrial Design 1 in my winter semester. I began to feel my English wasn’t good enough to fully understand most of the design theories. I had to write papers to describe my emotion then translate the abstract feeling to a conceptual physical model. I often misunderstood the subject and spent efforts on a wrong direction. No mater how hard I worked I seemed always missing the target. I got really frustrated and lost my interests to go to the class. I became very anxious before going to the class because I just could not get it. Even though I did not understand most of the design philosophy I still tried to remember what was taught by the instructors. I somehow managed to hang on and barely made it through. The coming semester was a lot better and easier for me because I started to design something tangible and practical. I designed a coreless phone, a spatula and a parking meter. I did pretty well in the class and gained my self-confidence again. During my study in CCAC, I always heard other students talk about the Art Center College of Design in LA Pasadena. I had read about the school and knew it was very difficult to get in and even more difficult to graduate from. The minimal 550 TOFEL requirement was scary enough for me. I decided to check it out anyway. I drove about six hours from san Francisco to Pasadena the finally got to the school. It was probably a holiday or between semesters because the building was locked. Through a tinted glass, I could see some stuff inside the building. Once I stepped up and took a better look, I was absolutely blown away by what I saw on the other side of glass. Beautiful design projects were nicely presented in a spacious gallery. I must have acted like a fool sticking my face to the glass for at least half an hour. Later I found out that Art Center had Night Class program. I decided to take the summer term off and packed my stuff to LA. Although I only attended class at night I spent a lot of time on the campus to learn from other students. I did quite well in the Night Class so I tried to apply for the transfer. Usually for foreign students we had to pass the English test and then the school would go through our portfolios. Once again, I was facing my biggest barrier, the TOFEL test, which failed me many times and I would hate to take another one. I scored 543 this time but the minimal was 550 to get in. two weeks left before going back to CCAC, a note from school told me the chairman saw my portfolio and he like it very much. I could even start from the second semester if I could pass the English test according to the school regulation. I had one last chance left or I had to return to CCAC. I had strong desire to transfer to Art Center not only because it was the best design school in America but also the class and program were more fit for me. I shaved my head and locked myself in a room for seven days. I studied TOFEL days and nights because my guts told me this could be another turning point in my life. I struggled to go back to san Francisco because I believed that through Art Center’s program I should be able to apply more practical thinking to my future design career. I finally passed the TOFEL test and scored 577. to many foreign students I knew, it was not a big deal but it was for me because once again I proved it to me that where is a will there is a way. Art Center was an extremely competitive environment. There were so many talented students working really hard to get great work done. Of course,quite a few different from CCAC’s program. One strongly emphasized on design techniques and presentation skills, and the other focused on creative thinking and design shapes. I think the combination of the capabilities still reflects on my design today. When I was in the junior terms, I had a good habit to go around the senior studios everyday before I went home. Sometimes I would stare at a good sketch or rendering for twenty minutes and try to figure out why the drawing was so well done. Although it was so competitive among students, we shared what we knew and did out best to help others. Art Center life in general was hard but very happy and fulfilling because I loved so much what I was doing. I was thirty years old when I graduated from The Art Center of Design. I had a relatively decent portfolio and large quantity of work so I soon got job offers from quite a few well known design firms and corporations. Considering overall offers and working environment I finally decided to work for Astro Design in Palo Alto. Astro was a young and fresh design firm founded by Brett Lovelady who worked as a V.P. at Frog Design before. Brett was the most carried boss with sincere warm personality. He was a great designer himself but he never asked his designer to change their designs. He trusted his designers and respected the team very much. His great vision and passion of making things better had led Astro to become a successful design company. Kyle Swen was the Studio Manager and Rob Bruce was the Design Director. Kyle was like a brother to me when I worked at Astro. He was an all around designer and I picked up most of my drawing techniques and design philosophy from him. His presence always made our studio fell energetic. I really appreciated what he tought me. Mike Simonian was my idel at Art Center. He was a super star and I looked up to him a lot. He resigned from Fitch and joined Astro later. I was thrilled to work with him and learned from him not only design in general but also perspective in lift and things more important than design. I also enjoyed working with many other talented and fun designers like Dave, Name, Stef ,Ray, Victor, Danny, Terry and Susan. They were not just my colleagues but friends for life. I had my most memorable design experience there.