Below is an essay that I recently wrote for one of my classes at uni. The end conclusion was written in a hurry and since my experience of industrial design consultancies is limited and i haven’t yet spent much time in china some of the conclusions and specultaions might be a bit skewed. But I hope you enjoy reading.
China has for the last decade been considered by the west as the “world’s factory”1, a source of “cheap labour”2, low cost manufacturing and low quality. “Even newly wealthy Chinese, wanting to show off their success with displays of affluence, [once] did what was natural for nouveaux rich everywhere: They bought expensive Western products.”2
However in the last five years we are beginning to see a “not so subtle shift”2 in this thinking, lead by the Chinese themselves, as the Chinese begin to move into a new era in their manufacturing, design and culture. The “Chinese are turning [back] to things Chinese”2 and are starting to demand Chinese products that rival the western brands in all levels including styling, functionality and design innovation. China’s consumers are turning to China’s large mainland corporations such as Haier and Aigo to provide them with products that cater specifically for their lifestyles and their tastes3.
The Immense and rapid changes in China are forcing sweeping changes in the Chinese manufacturing and Industrial Design sectors. Within Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou there has been an explosion in the amount of new design practices operating, with over 100 springing up in recent years3.
The new demand for Industrial Design has also allowed the ID practices that appeared early on in China to grow into companies that not only service the internal Chinese market but also provide services to external international brands. Bringing Chinese styling and design innovation to companies like Samsung, Sony and Philips4.
This is also forcing the large international design firms to sit up and take notice, with IDEO and Frog Design both opening large design office in Shanghai in the last five years5. Chinese brands are also starting to take notice of what is occurring. With Chinese corporations like Haier (Qingdao) investing heavily in developing and building their own in-house design teams as they start to recognise the need for design6. Due to these developments we are beginning to see a new sophistication in Chinese industrial design. This is evident from last years iF Design Awards where several Chinese owned companies such as LOE Design (Shanghai, Founded 1995) took home a raft of awards7.
However it is not just Corporations and Design firms that are trying to catch-up with the explosion in the Chinese market. China’s universities are also going through many rapid changes. With the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art moving into an eight-story facility in 2005 that has a space capacity for 3,000 Industrial Design Students7.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute, there will be 1.2 Million students that graduate from Chinese Universities in 2008. Of these 1.2 Million graduates 10,000 of them are Designers, coming out of the 400+ design schools. However according to McKinsey very few of them actually find design employment9. McKinsey claims this is due to these students being unable to compete on many levels with western graduates due to the lack of practical workplace skill, since the majority of Chinese University cirriculms are heavily based in theory9 and knowledge being attained through rote learning or the master apprentice style of learning19. These learning styles have lead to Chinese graduates lacking fundamental design thinking and analysis skills that are essential to modern design practice. Meanwhile in Australia around 3000 graduates came out of the nations 12 Universities and 8 TAFE courses between 1991 and 2001 inclusive10.
The modern form of Industrial Design is not something that has been widely practiced within China until up to approximately ten years ago. While Industrial Design consultancies such as Seymour/Powell12 appeared from about the mid 1980’s onwards in the western world, the majority of Chinese design consultancies have only just begun to appear within China in the last five years. This occurrence is largely due to Deng Xiaoping’s radical reform & opening up of china political policies were put in place in late 197913. Only a handful of Industrial Design practices like S-Point (started in 1997 by Zhou Yi in Shanghai14) and LOE Design having existed in China for a significant enough period to be actually able to compete with large western design firms like IDEO for the work from large international brands.
The vast changes occurring in China are providing opportunities for locals as well as for internationals. Many international companies and individuals are being enticed into business in China’s market of over 1.3 Billion people14. With a diverse range of Industrial Design practices from IDEO to Haier doing business in this behemoth economy. The following case studies are an attempt to analyse each type of company that is doing business within China and also to look at how it relates to Australian designers.
IDEO is an excellent example of an international Industrial Design practice that has set-up offices in China. Other practices that have recently done this include Aricent (formerly Flextronics Software) owned Frog Design.
IDEO is America’s and possibly the world best-known Industrial design practice started life in Palo Alto, California in 1991. IDEO has designed for the world’s leading brands including computer manufacturer Apple and automotive manufacturer BMW. Since their birth in 1991 then they have grown into a company that employees more than 500 employees, has offices in four countries and recently they opened an office in Shanghai15. While IDEO’s company fact sheet, as of writing, does not list any Chinese companies as clients, it is highly probable that they are doing work for Chinese companies. Especially since they provide strategic thinking that far outstrips what most of the world’s Industrial Design practices can currently provide. However IDEO’s key reasons for being setup in China would be to be able to have personnel readily available on the ground to be able to communicate effectively with their manufacturers and also to be able to make an attempt to tap the gigantic fresh talent pool that Chinese universities are providing.
For a select few Australian designers IDEO as a global company provides a chance for employment and the Shanghai office could provide employment a closer to home than the Palo Alto office.
The following two design practices are the best examples of Chinese owned and china based Industrial Design practices. Formed in 1995 & 1997 respectively and located in Shanghai, LOE Design & S-Point were two of the first design consultancies to appear within China, debuting at a slightly later time to the American firm IDEO. This early start has given both firms a major advantage within the current market in China as while many companies are still struggling to get up and running, as well as figure out the market within China, LOE & S-Point have many years of experience behind them to offer to not only Chinese companies but also to large international clients.
While both companies are providing services to a variety of clients internally & externally it is S-Point that appears to be a market leader in providing design solutions to the international companies wanting solutions for international markets, as well as providing solutions for Chinese companies that wish to move outside China into the rest of Asia, Europe & the United States. S-Point’s client list includes many big international names such as Samsung, Intel & Sharp. S-Point also has a considerable international network of partner design consultancies, which includes Siemens owned Designafairs16. On the opposite side LOE seems to be providing design solutions for Chinese companies that want to utilise design to improve their performance in the local market. Clients of LOE include Chinese companies LAMO & Eastcom for whom they have developed products for the internal market, both of which won them coveted iF Design Awards in 20067.
In relation to Australian design professionals these types of companies within china possibly pose the single largest threat not in only Australian design but also to Western design as a whole, however at the same time they also offer individual designers a significantly large opportunity. Many design professionals speculate that the current climate within China in relation to design, will give rise to a design power house that will render the ID professionals of the west obsolete, due to the sheer numbers of designers being churned out of Chinese design schools. However due to the current political, social & education situation within China, according to one source, this is highly unlikely. At least in the next 40 years, as Chinese universities are “[focusing] on traditional styling and basic problem-solving skills rather than the bigger, problem-defining issues that they could be tackling.”17 Therein lies great opportunity for the ID professionals from Australia, Europe & the United States. Since most schools in the west are already, somewhere in their curriculum, addressing conceptual & forward thinking. Armed with the ability to work within highly conceptual design frameworks Australian ID professionals provide a unique skill to companies like S-Point and LOE that Chinese graduates are currently unable to for fill. As well as being able to provide an intimate knowledge of the Australian market. A market that at some point the Chinese are going to want to get more heavily involved in.
Another type of company that is beginning to emerge is ex-pat owned Chinese Design practices such as onetwo design. Onetwo design is a small Shanghai based company that was started by American expat Lars Blacken in 2003 after his struggle to set up a U.S based design practice8. Onetwo is described as “the western company’s industrial designer on the ground for companies without their own industrial designer in China”18. Since setting up in Shanghai onetwo has been successful enough to be able to open an office in Seattle, U.S.A. While Onetwo’s main clients are large international brands like Samsung who have a “China presence” 18. Onetwo have also worked for the Chinese companies like networking giant Huawei18.
Practices like onetwo provide several opportunities for Australian industrial designers, as they are young companies that are looking for people that can give them the edge on the competition so that they can grow. According to Stefan Fritschi from Volkswagens Shanghai design office, the competition and demand for trained industrial designers is high in China8 and this demand is the biggest positive for
Australian industrial designers. Another big factor that will weigh heavily in Australian designers favour is the plain and simple fact that we are also expats looking to work in China and if there is one thing that expats like it is other expats. A job in a small practice like onetwo would also be a major springboard for any designer, as it would provide the introduction to the Chinese market and a gateway to larger companies in China, like Haier that internal ID departments.
Sony Corporation began life in 1946 as a small Japanese company that produced the first commercially available coat-pocket sized transistor radio and consequently Sony has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world11. Since the release of its Walkman Radio Sony has been successful in western markets with almost all of the products that they have produced. However until recently this success was not mirrored in all sectors of the Chinese markets. To address this, in August of 2005, Sony sent three designers to set-up their design center in Shanghai to help them to tap the youth market that they were missing out on due to brand perception problems8.
The Sony design centre was set up specifically to do research and product development & design for the Sony Corporation. They do not engage in any consultancy or work for any company other than Sony and its subsidiary companies; essentially it is an in-house design practice that is physically in a separate location. More of an extension of the in-house design practices in Tokyo set up to cater to the Chinese market rather than an individual entity. The key thing Sony’s decision to set-up a local design centre does show is that international companies are realising they can no longer send products that they design for the west into china and expect them to do well, they need to design specifically for the Chinese people. With many international companies operating in China still attempting to sell products that they are selling to the west or are just a restyling of what they sell to the west. Until recently General Motors (design offices in Shanghai) “made few changes to models sold in the mainland, figuring that consumers buying their first cars wouldn’t be too choosy”8 and even now GM’s design team devotes large amounts of time to “tailoring vehicles developed elsewhere to the Chinese market”8. In comparison Sony is creating products specifically for the Chinese by trying to understand the Chinse people through strong user centred research8.
Initially founded in 1984 and starting life as a government owned entity Haier is now a public company6. Haier are China’s largest whitegoods manufacturer and are located in Qingdao, Shandong, China. They are currently the world’s third largest white goods manufacturer with facilities on almost every continent. In 2005 they turned over in excess of $12 Billion dollars. Haier does not only produces for the local Chinese market. In the U.S Haier directly competes with north Americas largest whitegoods producers like General Electric and Whirlpool6. Haier is one of the few Chinese companies that recognised early on that design is an important factor that helps deliver a high return on investment. They recently set up a large in-house design centre that has a staff of 120 Industrial Designers and an extra 25 consumer research staff6.
Sony provides opportunities for Australian designers who are already employed by Sony since they would most likely be able to get a transfer to the Shanghai design
centre. For non-Sony employees the Shanghai design centre doesn’t provide much opportunity.
For Australian industrial designers Haier provides employment opportunities as they are pushing to become a globally recognised brand. The Australian market is one of the few they do not yet have a presence in and thus they would be looking for designers who understand the Australian market so they can move into it.
For Australian Industrial Designers the changes & development that are currently occurring in China can be seen as a huge threat or as a huge opportunity.
Many designers and critics in the western world view China as a large threat to their current practices. This is understandable since in a year China is currently churning out well over ten times the number of industrial designer graduates that Australia produce. However the local market is absorbing the majority of the graduates or they are finding employment in areas other than design. As such it is highly unlikely that they will be “stealing” Australian, UK or US design jobs in the next 10 to 20 years. The second major situation that will for the next five years or so keep Chinese designers out of western jobs is the huge disparity between the quality of Western and Chinese design education. The Chinese education system is currently focusing heavily on design styling rather than design thinking, though this will definitely begin to change in the coming years.
Western Designers currently have considerable advantages over Chinese designers in the quality of their design training and design thinking. The majority of Industrial Design schools in Australia focusing on design thinking, strategy and critical analysis in the core subjects of their courses. The largest advantage is the considerable size of China’s economy and market place, with many companies beginning to look for designers than can provide the design thinking as well as product styling. Overall it seems that employment prospects in China are positive for Australian designers. The biggest barrier will however be language. However this could be addressed by Industrial Design courses that have Chinese as one of their core subjects.
1Call China Workshop Instead of World Factory, http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/93993.htm, accessed 1st June 2007
2China’s new cultural revolution, Fortune Magazine, Page 29, May 28th 2007
3Chinese tech firms combine form and function to capture local market, http://china.seekingalpha.com/article/18412, October 18th 2006, accessed 20th May 2007
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8 BuisnessWeek – China Design: How the mainland is becoming a global center for hot products – November 21st 2005
9China’s looming talent shortage, McKinsey Global Institute, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/19364, 2005, 21st May 2007
10Industrial Design Industry Overview Report, Design Institute of Australia, D Robertson
11Sony corporate profile, http://www.sony.com/SCA/corporate.shtml?ref=http%3A//www.sony.com/index.php, accessed 2nd June 2007 & Sony, Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony, 26th May 2007, accessed 1st June 2007
12About, http://www.seymourpowell.co.uk/about.php, accessed 20th May 2007-06-04
13History of the Peoples Republic of China (1976-1989), Wikipedia the free encyclopaedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_and_opening_up#Reform_and_opening_up, acessed 27th May 2007
14Zhou Yi, Wallpaper, December | January 2006
15IDEO Fact Sheet, http://www.ideo.com, May 2007, accessed 2nd June 2007
16May all the stars shine for you, http://www.spointdesign.de/network/network.htm, 2006, accessed 1st June 2007
17 We Got Sick of Hearing About Design & China – So we Got on a Plane and Went There, Core77 Article (http://www.core77.com/reactor/08.05_china.asp) BM. Tharp & S Munson, August 2005
18Lars Blacken, http://www.chinalawblog.com/chinalawblog/2006/02/lars_blacken_sh.html, February 2006, accessed 28th May 2007
19Why does China copy designs?, http://designsojourn.com/index.php/2007/05/15/why-does-china-copy-designs, 15th May 2007, accessed 23rd May.
