Peking University, September 26, 2018: On September 22, 2018 Beijing Design Week was open at the China Millennium Monument. In the awarding ceremony, the Chinese Character Information Processing and Laser Phototypesetting System developed by Peking University’s Wang Xuan Team stood out from more than 400 works and won the Classic Design Award, the highest award of Beijing Design Week.
Wang Xuan’s project won the Classic Design Award
As a standard award of Beijing Design Week, the Classic Design Award aims to select classic designs with innovative spirits. Previous winners include Jiaolong Manned Submersible, Huawei Mobile and China High Speed Rail, and the competition for the 2018 Classic Design Award is even more intense. As a great design that has made significant contributions to social development, the awarding project will have its name engraved on a bronze nameplate, which will be permanently embedded in the bronze martyrdom during the opening ceremony of Beijing Design Week in 2019.
In the year of 1979, Professor Wang Xuan with his colleagues designed the fourth generation of laser phototypesetting system, overcame worldwide difficulties, and obtained European and Chinese invention patents. Based on the aforementioned technologies, Huaguang and Founder Electronics Publishing Systems occupied 99% of the domestic newspaper industry and 90% of the black-and-white book publishing industry. Around 1992, Wang Xuan’s team successfully developed the world’s first Chinese color photo-distribution system and a series of innovations, occupying 90% of the overseas Chinese newspaper industry. Wang Xuan’s invention was hailed as the second revolution of Chinese printing after Bi Sheng’s invention of movable type printing, as well as the trigger of the technological revolution in China’s publishing industry to “abandon lead and fire, greet light and electricity”. With the inheritance and development of Chinese characters in the information age made possible, China’s printing design had broken new ground and became a model for high-tech designs transformed from traditional industries.
Awarding Site
According to the award committee, Wang Xuan, the chief designer of Chinese Character Information Processing and Laser Phototypesetting System, plays a pivotal role in the project and deserves to be recognized as an architect. Guo Zongming, Dean of PKU Institute of Computer Science and Technology, said that Wang Xuan had gone through great difficulties in order to achieve this great accomplishment. The younger generation of the institute has already made a series of new achievements and will continue to imbibe his spirit in the future.
2018 Beijing International Design Week was held from September 22nd to October 7th. The Chinese Design 40 Years Retrospective Exhibition (1978-2018) Since the Reform and Opening Up was opened simultaneously at the China Millennium South Square.
Written by: Li Haiyue
Edited by: Zhou Yijing
Source: PKU News (Chinese)
