The D&AD Taiwan Exhibition 2025 officially opened on November 26 at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). Hosted by the university’s Department of Design in collaboration with the UK-based D&AD, the event concluded its run on December 3.
Held under the theme “Judging & Be a Judge,” this year’s exhibition aimed to challenge the conventional top-down model of design judgment by inviting all visitors to actively participate in the evaluation process.
Long associated with closed-door expert decision-making, design juries are traditionally viewed as the sole arbiters of which works merit recognition. This year’s exhibition, titled Judge & Be Judging, sought to disrupt that notion. Every visitor who completed an evaluation at the venue was given a symbolic certificate affirming their role as a “juror.”
Guests attending the opening received a specially designed A5-sized card — not a ticket, but an invitation to judge. According to the curatorial team, this gesture encouraged attendees to bring their individual cultural and personal perspectives to the exhibition, transforming how works recognized with the Yellow, Graphite, and Wood Pencils were perceived.
Curator and NTUST Professor Ken-Tsai Lee explained, “Design shouldn’t live in an ivory tower — it should be a collective act of seeing.”
Through interactive and accessible displays, the exhibition aimed to demystify the process behind jury decisions and make the logic of evaluation more transparent to the public. The space itself was designed to encourage reflection and re-evaluation, from its layout to the way visitors moved through the exhibits.
The organizers emphasized that the intention was not to replicate the methods of professional jurors but to help audiences understand the reasoning behind their decisions. By considering a work’s context and intention, visitors became more than spectators — they became critical observers.
At this year’s exhibition, the audience’s evaluations were displayed alongside those of the international jury. The result was a dual-track system that underscored how creativity can be interpreted in multiple ways, depending on the viewer’s perspective.
Led by Professor Ken-Tsai Lee and organized by his team at the NTUST Department of Design, the exhibition sought to deepen engagement between Taiwan and the global design community, while inspiring a new generation of critical and creative thinkers.
