Core77

This morning of the second day of BODW commenced with a colorful presentation of patterns and cuts by fashion/textile designer Zandra Rhodes. A real pick-me-up highlight was Ron Arad's boisterous and inspirational presentation, showing early chair designs to his latest hotel designs. His experiment-oriented process of designing served as a reminder that quantity of ideas is not so much of a concern as, knowing which the good ones are. There are a myriad of creative and skilled professionals, but the world lacks an equal number of good clients.

The afternoon session focused on "Brand, Product and Technology", kicking off with Peter Zec, of ICSID, that design needs to communicate its value in a more pragmatic way. He explained that there is no real definition on how much money a company should invest in product development, however other professions, like the advertising community, use a fixed budget and still gain credibility. In turn, design should do the same in order to have more credibility. Later on, Martin Darbyside from Tangerine gave a similar talk, illustrating his points with examples of in-depth projects such as the successful Club World sleeper seat. After a coffee break, came the grand finale for the day, where Jin Kim from LG Electronics revealed the design process encompassing their hit Chocolate cell phone, spiced up with nice trend-maps, early sketches and color palettes.

The Innovation and Design Expo was a bit less than packed today--perhaps because Hong Kong is a perpetually busy city. But we were there to excitedly discover some weird stuff in the Inventors Section, like an ashtray that keeps a forgotten cigarette lit for 2 hours, allowing the smoker to resume smoking after the time had passed. We also enjoyed conversing with the folks at the "Smart Boutique", who showcased an RFID based system (developed by PolyU and Schmidtrfid) of sensors and a visual database that allows "go" to a shop, choose items of clothing, and then try them on--omplete with suggestions and service.

Today also marked the announcement of the 2006 Design for Asia winners. The images above and below represent a few products from the winning companies including Apple, Banyan Tree, Integration Co., Lane Crawford, LG, Nigata Industrial, Odaku Electric Railway Co., Samsung, Thann-Oryza, BenQ, Shunde, Daka Development, House of Three, Philips, Traxon Technologies, Anothermountainman, and Steelcase.