Anna Zhao

    anna.whizh@yahoo.com

    FUTURE designs will be smarter and show more concerns for green energy and the environment, according to designers and industry leaders attending the Third China (Shenzhen) Industrial Design Fair held over the weekend.

    While “smart” designs are the result of technology advancement, consumers’ calls for “green and environmentally friendly” designs is a more arduous task for designers as a whole, given that humanity is facing a natural resource shortage and other social problems.

    On the bright side, the challenges are also opportunities for designers, according to Brandon Gien, president of the Internal Council of Societies of Industrial Design, because “it’s the designer’s decision of what to make that can make a better future for human beings.”

    As the leader overlooking a global design organization, Gien said the sad part of design is what impact a design has on the environment: products are increasingly ending up in landfills. “Designers are producing things with little value or meaning to society,” he said in an interview with Shenzhen Daily.

    An example of that, he said, is products that are created to suit the craze of everyone being connected to the Internet in the explosion of the Internet of things.

    He thinks that industrial design has entered a new era — design is not just about products and services, it’s about social responsibility. “Designers should be conscientious of the product they design from the very phase of conceptualizing them,” he said.

    “The message we’re trying to send is that the designer should slow down and ask questions, think about the value of the design and what problem can be solved.”

    Designers at a discussion about the future of design Saturday also echoed this idea.

    Mark Yong, vice president of the Singapore Furniture Industries Council, said a good design should maximize product function by using the advantage of materials.

    “Unlike China, Singapore doesn’t have a huge manufacturing industry so we have to create possibilities with very limited resources,” said Yong.

    George Budiman, chairperson of Asian Creative Industries Alliances, said designers should make full use of materials. He cited an example of his team using recycled buttons to create art, which was a success for the design itself and raised the public’s awareness of environmental protection.