Taiwan's 3rd Textbook Design Award to Begin Accepting Submissions on June 10

(CNA, by reporter Wang Pao-erh, Taipei, 8th) The 3rd edition of the Textbook Design Award, launched in 2021, will begin its call for entries on June 10, with an awards ceremony scheduled for October. To showcase the results of the initiative, the Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI) recently held a forum and exhibited past award-winning works.

The Textbook Design Award is guided by the Ministry of Education and executed by the TDRI. In addition to discovering talent and encouraging the industry to value design through the awards, it has also promoted the "Textbook Innovation Design Subsidy Program" since 2024. This program matches design teams with textbook publishers to collaborate on redesigning textbook covers and inner pages.

TDRI stated in a press release today that since the implementation of the subsidy program, it has cumulatively matched 8 publishing companies and 20 design teams, completing the cover and inner page redesigns for 65 textbooks. These cover 11 grade levels and 14 subjects from elementary and middle school to high school and vocational school. The results from the second round of redesigns, completed last year, will be launched sequentially in the 115th to 116th academic years (2026-2027).

On June 6, TDRI held the "New Horizons in Education: A Forum on Transforming Teaching Materials," inviting Professor Ben Yeh from NTU's Electrical Engineering department and designer Aaron Feng to share how to introduce design thinking to improve educational effectiveness. An exhibition area was set up concurrently, where the results of the second Textbook Innovation Design Subsidy Program were also displayed for a sneak peek.

For example, the "Junior High School Natural Science, Year One" textbook, a collaboration between Hanlin Publishing and design team LAYR., combines photographic works of Taiwan's protected species, the fairy pitta and the orca, using a "one land, one sea" dual cover to spark students' interest in exploring nature. Another example is the "Senior High School All-Out Defense Education (Version B)" from Young Lion Culture in partnership with Yibu Studio, which moves away from the previous presentation of mostly real photos, instead using a combination of illustrations and relatable life examples while reorganizing the layout and reading flow.

TDRI announced that following the forum and presentation of results, the 3rd Textbook Design Award will begin its call for entries on the 10th. The competition includes categories for "Cover Design," "Diverse Teaching Material Innovation," and "Learning Design." Registration is open until 5:00 PM on August 10. (Editor: Kuan Chung-wei) 1150608