“We got sick of hearing about design & China, so we got on a plane and went there”

Chery’s QQ car — one of China’s most famous industrial designs, for all the wrong reasons

Core 77, whichs bills itself as an “industrial design supersite” has published an interesting piece by two American designers who came to China to see what all the fuss was about. They were in Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing during May and June 2005, lecturing at the Southern Yangtze University, School of Design (whose website is unappealingly named sodcn.com) and meeting with Chinese designers.

The article is well worth a read if you are interested in China’s progress (or lack thereof) in creating its own intellectual property rather than merely being a huge factory.