Hardware design gold vacancy exposed the weakness of the industry

On December 11, the final evaluation of the 2011 Zhongshan City Industrial Design Competition was held in the Industrial Design Industrial Park in Longshan Park, Xiaolan Town. The 62 entries that were fortunate in the preliminary competition of the competition began a brutal competition, culminating in a maximum bonus of 1 Million yuan contest gold medal. The reporter witnessed the entire final review process at the assessment site.

Some of the creative works are refreshing. At 10 o'clock in the morning on December 11th, the final selection of the contest began. Several contest judges were sitting in the exhibition hall of the Industrial Design Industrial Park. Only 62 of them were marked with numbered entries. According to the five categories of household appliances, furniture, lighting, daily necessities, and hardware, they were placed in front of the judges in order to allow the judges to use sharp professional opinions to comment on the issue. “The base color of this middle-aged and elderly electronic blood pressure monitor is too bright to meet the judges. The aesthetics of the middle-aged and elderly.” “The relevant parts of this stroller do not issue a safety test report and there is no safety issue” ... The judges have to “prick” each work for more than 10 minutes or 20 minutes. "Arguing" a few back and forth before reaching a consensus evaluation.

“Industrial design is the use of unique innovative and creative methods to make our lives better.” This is a straightforward explanation of the emerging service industry of industrial design by Professor Tong Huiming, the judge of the contest and dean of the School of Design of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. According to him, the reporter saw many of the 62 finalist works that could show the charm of industrial design. The creativeness of these works is refreshing.

For example, the portable stainless steel barbecue grill in the daily necessities category can be folded into a password box size. After opening, it is equivalent to the kind of barbecue grill that is common to street people. It can also hold barbecue tools, forks and clips. , charcoal and food can be carried in the wild when grilling, and it is very convenient to carry it by hand. The multi-functional snake-type LED lamp of the illumination lighting works is shaped like a smoke tube of a range hood and can be twisted into different shapes according to needs. When it is used, it can be bent and hung on his neck to shine on the hand. The books can also be put on the bedside and are very practical for students staying in school. The electronic fruit plate of the home appliance works is even more unique. The fruit plate adopts low pressure preservation and light wave freshening technology to realize the non-freezing normal temperature preservation function, and it is not good for elderly people, children, pregnant women, and gastrointestinal troubles who avoid eating frozen foods. The crowd is very helpful...

The gold medals for the two major categories of work exposed the industry’s soft underbelly after a whole day of rigorous review, and the jury of the contest finalized the list of winners. The reporter found that the highest awards for furniture and hardware works are only silver prizes, and the gold medal works are vacant. Such a list may surprise many business people in Zhongshan: The furniture industry and the hardware industry are the traditional characteristics of Zhongshan. After years of development, couldn't they find an industrial design that satisfied the judges?

Professor Wu Bin, a judge of the competition and director of the Department of Art and Design at Zhongshan Vocational and Technical College, frankly stated to reporters that many innovations in furniture work focused on changes in furniture shapes and styles, or focused on the mix and match between wood and steel structures and fabrics. It also provides new conveniences for modern lifestyles, but these are appearance and formal innovations, and there are not many innovative ideas in practical functions. The work clearly reflects the lack of creativity.

Tong Huiming commented on hardware works that industrial design should be perfect from technology to appearance. The hardware work of this competition has two extremes. Either there is a very good creative point, but the design is too general to attract the attention of consumers. Most of these design works are from the hands of corporate staff in R&D and design departments. They pay more attention to the development of product functions. They hope to adopt New features achieve economic benefits. “But no matter how good technology your product is, if the appearance is too general, consumers are simply not willing to take the time to understand your product.” Either there is a good design, but there is not enough technical innovation support. Most of the works are from the hands of students in technical secondary schools. They pay more attention to appearance innovation. "If these design works can cooperate with some professional industrial design companies and jointly revise and perfect the design works, then it is possible to transform them into real products."

The relevant person in charge of the Municipal Industrial Design Association told the reporter that the competition was judged by the five major assessment indicators of the design, innovation, economy, craftsmanship, and sociality of the work, focusing on whether or not the design work can be achieved in technology and art. Combining, effectively using new structures, new technologies, new materials, and new processes, highlighting innovative points; unique and innovative design concepts, guiding future product development trends, with unique comprehensive expressive force; suitable for the needs of certain types of markets and certain environments, With high cost-effectiveness, it can improve economic efficiency, and the concept design should also fully consider market value and realizability. Judging from the furniture and hardware designs for this competition, it is indeed very difficult to find a work that satisfied the judges. Some of the original works that were more likely to win the gold medal were not allowed to have a variety of flaws. They did not drop the top spot; some even canceled awards because the judges searched for similar or similar products from the Internet and were judged as non-original by the judges. The gold medal vacancies for furniture and hardware products also revealed weaknesses in the industrial design of these two traditional industries in our city.