Announcing the winner of Kaohsiung Mascot design – “Tall Bear”

Announcing the winner of Kaohsiung Mascot design – “Tall Bear”   (Kaohsiung) Sponsored by the Tourism Bureau of Kaohsiung, the Kaohsiung Mascot “Tall Bear” (homophone of Kaohsiung) design contest attracted widespread acclaims. There were 310 entries during the one-month bid period. After in-depth review and evaluation, the winner was announced last week. Mr. Huang, a student from the Department of Industrial Design, National Kaohsiung Normal University won the first place and NT$ 60,000. The judges agreed unanimous that the physical build of his “Kaohsiung” (tall bear) was pleasing to people and looked very neat with simple yet beautiful shapes. It would be the best brand representative of Kaohsiung in promoting its tourism. The Director-General of the Tourism Bureau of Kaohsiung suggested that many cities had mascots to promote their tourism. The mascots can represent and symbolize their cities in the international arena, and to promote the cities’ popularity with the pleasing images. Thus, Kaohsiung City uses the image of Taiwanese black bear as the origin to create a “tall bear” which is pronounced the same as “Kaohsiung” in Mandarin. During the design campaign, many explored their liberal creativeness, blending the features of Kaohsiung with the bear, and designed animated images for the harbor city. The chosen mascot will be produced in a variety to represent Kaohsiung for promoting tourism in the future.   Director-General Hsu Chuan-Sheng expressed that the Tourism Bureau would discuss with the designer and the first prize winner of “Kaohsiung” (tall bear), to obtain more room for alternatives, such as increasing diverse accessories and application elements. In the future, the mascot “Tall Bear” will travel around the world as a symbol of Kaohsiung to promote the harbor city and its image of being a tropical tourist resort. Hopefully, it will attract international visitors to Kaohsiung and introduce more trade opportunities and tourists. Moreover, various accessories with related themes will be presented to visitors. For more information, please visit the website of Kaohsiung tourism: http://khh.travel/tw/default1.asp. The award winning mascot of Kaohsiung – Tall Bear