Melamine Factory

I've went on a tour with my co-worker to what my boss called "the largest melamine factory in China" this week. For those who only known of Melamine as the harmful substance used in the baby formula scandal last year, it have been used to make useful products like kitchen countertops and tablewares for decades. It's only harmful when it gets into your bloodstream.





A bag of Melamine. Safe as long as it doesn't get into your bloodstream.

A factory worker and the high pressure compression molding m
achine.

The buffing station.

Shenzhen Architectures

People don't usually associate Shenzhen with great architectures and urban planning, but when I took a walk around the Futian district after the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair, it's actually not bad. I can see that the district is at its early stages, but at least the framework is there.

Rem Koohaus' Shenzhen Stock Exchange. His next flaming archite
cture stunt?

Shenzhen City Hall. I haven't been to the Tiananmen Square, but this structure should be comparable to it in size.

























Coco Park. Looks like the equivalent of Elements in Kowloon, but missing the view and land value.

Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair

I had a chance to go to the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair last week. I didn't have enough time to walk through the whole show, but I got to see some cool stuff.

3D TV
I remembered the first time I went into a 3D theater back when I was 10 or so at Disney. Though I didn't really like the short movie, it was an immersive experience. After so many years, it wasn't much of a surprise to see the technology getting applied onto televisions. The image quality was good. I did see a bit of misalignment in the video, which should be solved with a bit of adjustment. They showed it on a projector instead of a TV, but I guess they did it to give people a more immersive experience.

Smart Home
I've done a bit of research on it during university, so I know what it was about. Most of the smart technologies shown at the booth was based on the idea that you can control the lights, HVAC system, window blinds, and other electronic appliances remotely. Nothing groundbreaking, but they were the only exhibitors showing such technology.

Lasers
For some reason, I noticed a lot of exhibitors showing laser cutting and etching technologies at various scales. Though I haven't seen the machines first hand before, I've certainly seen a lot of examples of products on the market that have used the technology. It certainly does a good job at attracting people's attention.

Objectified DVD Arrived

After much anticipation, my copy of Objectified DVD finally arrived a few weeks ago. It was packed inside of a cardboard mailer which was just two pieces of cardboard that are glued at the edges. Underwhelming, but it does the job with little impact to the environment.

I was most interested to see the part with Jonathan Ive where he talked about how a large part of designing the Macbooks was on designing the process. They actually spent a lot of time designing the fixtures that secure the unibody in the manufacturing process.

Dieter Ram's part was special in that his words added a lot of weight to the profession by listing out the principals of good design. Kind of sad that he's not designing much nowadays. Frank Gehry is several years older than him and he's still designing.

I also enjoyed Karim Rashid's part where he challenged people to design objects that reflect the moment we live in.

Chris Bangle and Rob Walker's part was a bit of a surprise to me in that I don't know much of their background, but the things they've said were quite interesting. Especially Chris' explanation of how cars are like frozen sculptures that are put into movement by the people who drive them.

Objectified on Youtube

Disappointed that Objectified's DVD release got delayed, I went ahead to search for it on Youtube. Only parts of it are uploaded, but it's all gold.

I remembered working on similar aluminum bezels before. They feel surreal to hold in your hands at first as they can be incredibly accurate and feel super light. I might also add that the cost to make something like that also contributed to the surrealism.

I agree with Rob. Our civilization have been trained to buy into the "new". Industries (especially the fashion industry) invented trends to sort of keep people constantly in buying mode. On the other hand, this system is what keeps our economy going and get us fed. I think as designers and citizens of the world, we have a responsibility in making sure that whatever we do moves us forward.

Karim almost said the "F" word at 1:13.

David Kelly kept saying "the GPS thing".

花形恐懼症

這是比較舊的片斷。 但身為設計師都應該在生活或工作上經歷過相似的處境...

SketchBook Mobile iPhone App from Autodesk

This is awesome. Despite how awkward it is to use your finger to draw, I appreciate the effort that Autodesk have put into making an iPhone App out of their SketchBook software.

It's not going to replace my graphic tablet anytime soon...until maybe THE tablet arrives...

Philippe Starck: "Design for Life" Episode 1

Grab some popcorns (and mooncakes) tonight as you watch 12 British designers kiss (literally) Philippe Starck's design philosophy in "Design for Life".

Philippe brought some good perspectives to the show, but it does get a bit confusing during the crit and you can see it all in the contestant's fraustration.

And yes, protective casings for your iPods are bad. We all agree with that.

Design for Life from design on Vimeo.

International Design Excellence Award Winners 2009

Winners for the 2009 International Design Excellence Award have been announced.

As always, lots of winners from Apple and Samsung...

Chinese design teams are still missing in action for these awards...

Link:

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/idea/2009/slideshows.htm?chan=innovation_special+report+--+design+awards+2009_special+report+--+design+awards+2009

China Hi-Tech Fair 2009

I'm marking this on my calendar:

China Hi-Tech Fair
November 16th-21th 2009
Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center

http://www.szcpost.com/2009/07/china-hi-tech-fair-2009-shenzhen-china.html

Reinventing Industries in Pearl River Delta - Summary

Last month in Hong Kong, there was this conference called "Reinventing Industries in Pearl River Delta" that I really wanted to attend, but I don't feel like spending around $1000HKD for it.

Just today on Core77, I have found this link to an article that summarizes the discussion during the conference:

http://www.prw.com/subscriber/headlines2.html?cat=1&id=1247825634

Chinese manufacturers of course wants to work with low risk high return products that will keep them happy for a long time. But by this time now, such opportunities don't come easy anymore. From working with several manufacturers in the region, they are increasingly working more and more with foreign and local firms to develop new and better products.

A Brief Visit to the City of Design in Shenzhen

I had to go up to Shenzhen for a meeting last Friday afternoon so I decided to use the morning to visit this place called the "City of Design" in the Futian District. The City of Design is basically a 1.5 hectare estate that provides office space for companies in the creative industry. The walk to the place was about 15 minutes from the subway station, but under the wet and humid weather, it wasn't the most comfortable walk. When I got there, the place felt rather peaceful and suburb-like compared to the usual busy streets of Shenzhen. Since I didn't make extensive planning before the trip there, I wasn't expecting to see much.

There wasn't really much to see there other than a small innovation gallery, which is nothing compare to the design gallery at the Hong Kong Convention Center. Outside the gallery, there is a stage with a sign that reads: "Design creates brand", and "Innovation wins value". These are not the most inspirational quotes that I've seen, but at least it shows that China sees the value in design.

I later did some googling on the web and found out that there are now over 200 registered industrial design firms in Shenzhen alone: http://www.sznews.com/zhuanti/content/2008-06/18/content_3050129.htm

Do products ever reach an "ultimate state"?

Below was a post that I've started on the Core77 forums:

Is there ever an "ultimate state" for a product whereby the product have evolved to the point where it cannot be significantly improved anymore? EG. I felt that Apple's MacPro, Mac Mini, and MacBook have already reached its "ultimate state" (in terms of industrial design). If there's ever going to be a design change to that product, it would be very minor or non-industrial design related (eg. a new processor, more rams, better graphics card).

See if you can list other products that have reached its "ultimate state".

Also what happens when a product have reached its "ultimate state"? Sit back, layoff all the designers, and watch the sales grow?

The natural answer is that as long as people continue to innovate newer technologies, there will always be a better "ultimate state". But what if the technology have become so advanced that it's no longer worth it to invest more resources into improving the product?

Is it really necessary to create different iterations of essentially the same product over and over again until every niche in the market is covered?

I've been doing quite a bit of what I would called "quickfire" houseware product concepts for the past month or so. Why I decide to called it "quickfire" is because most of these projects are commission based, therefore, I'm more inclined to move the project from concept to shipped product as quickly as possible so that I can get rewarded quicker and more frequent. In a way, I see that this scenario is like the part in The Inconvenient Truth where Al Gore was illustrating how people have this tendency to weigh "goldbars" more than the planet Earth. I know that this is an unhealthy practice for industrial designers as it really makes the use of the Earth's precious resources into a casual practice -- all just to satisfy human being's insatiable desire for a better object and most of all, money. So this begs the question: Is it really necessary to create different iterations of essentially the same product over and over again until every niche in the market is covered? My best answer is to make sure that I do what I can to make sure that what I design is as close to "the ideal" as possible so that there will be less desire for people to have to ever buy or design a better iteration of that same product again in the future. To do that, I felt that keeping the product down to its essential elements is important. As an industrial designer, I felt less compelled to design something when I see that the market is already saturated with already well designed products.

Hello World

Having worked as an industrial designer for almost 3 years now, I felt that industrial designers have a responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of the products that they design.