Article:

To understand contemporary Taiwanese history of graphic design, one may want to learn the development of Taiwan politics first. This article will demonstrate how Taiwanese graphic design is influenced by political trends. However, when politics intervenes in graphic design, the creating process would be restrained since designers will need more thoughts before applying texts and images. The evolution of Taiwanese graphic design is the best testimony of the argument, by crossing the post-colonial period, the crisis of national- and ethnics-identity in 1971, and the social conflict after the end of Martial Law in1987. Graphic design works with Taiwanese consciousness may have less commercial sense, but describe the subjectivity value of the society with more accuracy. The works contain the essential elements that make graphic design step from localization to internalization which are the main streams in the history of Taiwanese contemporary design.