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Foshan’s Shunde held the 2018 Shunde Creative Design Week and China Design Day on December 9 to start a “design wave” in the Greater Bay Area, a move to upgrade the industry by creative design, to promote quality economic development.
Top design studios from China, US, Germany, UK, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey attended, sharing the latest information and ideas in design and synergizing innovative design achievements, to empower the manufacturing sector in the province.
A local government official said the conference is expected to integrate global high-end resources of design, technology, and industry to open a new starting point for Shunde’s design industry and make the city famous for “Design in Shunde,” enabling it to launch a path of quality development for the province and even the entire nation.
Building the new engine for a strong manufacturing zone
Innovation by design is the core value of the industrial economy, also an important criterion to measure the competitiveness of a country. Over 20 countries in the world have already brought the industrialization of industrial design into their national development strategies. Conforming to the wave of transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, Shunde, based on its solid manufacturing foundations, has built China’s first industrial park featuring industrial design in 2009 after cooperating with the provincial government, serving as the trendsetter of optimization and upgrading of manufacturing.
A total of 250 well-known design studios from Germany, US, France, Japan, Sout Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and other countries have been introduced to the GIDC until the end of 2017, with more than 8,000 designers to generate a design services industry of 700 million yuan and some 1,000 design patents. At the same time, GIDC efforts on outputting designs, designers, public service and construction standards of industrial parks, contributing to the national industry via its wide business scope at home and abroad.
Exploring new paths of high-quality development
The conference, themed “Design in the AI Era: Empowering high-quality development,” is hosted by GIDC and under the direction of Department of Industry and Information Technology of Guangdong Province and Foshan government. Co-organized by TechNode, Guangdong Industrial Design Association, Shunde Industrial Design Association, and Guangdong Totin Investment, the conference is also jointly supported by Guangdong Industrial Design Innovation Services Alliance, Midea, Country Garden, Beijing Taihuoniao Technology as well as other organizations.
The conference was attended by top academics and scholars from the World Design Organization, Korean Institute of Design Promotion, Porsche, Midea, JD.com and Royole to exchange views on the four main agendas: “Design + AI”, “Design + Intelligence Manufacture”, “Design + Intelligence Experience” and “Design + Investment.” They also had an interconnected innovative brainstorming following the prospect of the integration of design and technology to figure out new ideas and paths of the high-quality development of the industrial economy.
More than a hundred enterprises from 8 countries—China, US, Germany, UK, France, Japan, S. Korea and Turkey – attended, including world famous companies and institutes such as IDEO, Porsche Design, Harman Kardon, Royal College of Art, Sloan School of Management at MIT, World Bank, Samsung Design Department, Y-CITY and Seoul Design Center. Domestic leading organizations such as JD, Xiaomi, Midea, Country Garden, Low- Carbon Design Society of Hong Kong, and Shenzhen Industrial Design Profession Association (SIDA) also debuted. Plus, a congratulatory video for the opening ceremony was presented by the president of World Design Organization Luisa Bocchietto.
The “Shunde Design” committee is a new measure to further promote the development of industrial design in Shunde, a move to build a decision-making consulting mechanism for high-quality operation and development. The appointed experts are expected to seize the penetration and fusion of industrial design and manufacture, as well as the overall direction of their integration with science and technology, to facilitate the whole industry to into high level, internationalization, and branding.
At the same time, Shunde Industrial Design Association unites famous business incubation platform Huotainiao Technology and TechNode to issue a call for an “international technology industrial cooperation alliance,” converging science and technology, design and manufacturing industries to promote the integration of tech and design. Targeting to enhance the industrial competitiveness, the alliance will focus on “innovation-driven transformation and upgrading” and use the market mechanism to collect all creative resources to enlarge the value of design and to ensure the successful completion of technical projects for all the local leading enterprises. The establishment of the alliance is expected to boost the transformation of technology and deepen creative cooperation between Shunde and foreigners, to further accelerate Shunde’s win-win situation on opening up and development.
The Sino-Korean (Shunde) Design Center was also announced at GIDC. As Shunde’s the first project in collaboration with Korean Institute of Design Promotion, this marks another milestone of the internationalization of GIDC. The center is expected to advance Shunde’s cooperation with S. Korea on innovative design and promote the “seamless joining” of excellent Korea-designing products and Shunde’s manufacturing market, for the further optimization and upgrading of traditional industries in Shunde and high-qualify developing of industrial design.
Four sub-forums to promote achievements
Themed “Design in the AI era: Empowering high-quality development”, the conference also held a series of events such as design sub-forum, a special session for cooperation, a seminar and the Designers’ Night, to brainstorm ideas for high-quality development.
A forum entitled “Embracing International Design” is scheduled to be held on Dec. 10, with keynote speeches from MIT, World Bank and Y-CITY to have in-depth exchange on how industrial design connects international innovation with Chinese manufacturing, how to activate innovations of comprehensive industrial parks and how cutting-edge technology can empower industries, while focusing on the optimization and high-quality development of industries via “Design + Manufacturing”.
The “International Design Registration via the Hague System International Seminar” will open at Huaguiyuan in Shunde on Dec 13. It is co-sponsored by the World Intelligence Organization (WIPO) China Office and Guangdong Administration of Market Supervision and organized by Shunde Market Supervision and Administration Bureau.
Following the conference, four special sessions for cooperations achievements on technology, creative design, entries of the competition and “Design in Shunde.” Spanning an area of 2,500 square meters, the sessions will welcome some 200 projects from tech unicorns and designing brands to release and showcase products.
A series of significant policies and planning over “Design in Shunde” will be announced, and four design parks with total square meters of 300,000 will be introduced at the same time to invite investment from the world. They are Chendajiao Creative Design Park, Guangdong Home Design Valley, Shunde Creative Jewelry Design Park, and Lecong International Creative Home Design City.
Plus, a Designers’ Night Gala was held on Dec 9 at GIDC to demonstrate the elegant demeanor of designers.
Showcase the development of industrial design in Shunde
As another highlight, a “Design in Shunde” exhibition was inaugurated in GIDC on Sunday and trial approaches were provided to the guests.
The industrial design in Shunde has just gone through a ten-year development since firstly set up in 2009. Starting from scratch, huge achievements have been realized in the past ten years. The GIDC is considered as the epitome of the development of industrial design after successively awarded “Demonstration Base for Neo- Industrialization” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, “Demonstration Base for Industrial Design and Creative Industry” by the State Intellectual Property Office, “Demonstration Base for National Industrial Design” by China’s Industrial Design Association.
Therefore, the “Design in Shunde” museum will feature industrial design and display the best-design products panoramically. The exhibition is expected to reflect the history of China’s industrialization and the design wisdom behind through the mass-produced industrial exhibits of various periods.
A 1.5-billion-yuan investment
The Shunde government has formulated an action plan for Shunde’s development in the next three years, to define the blueprint of the boomtown and build “Design in Shunde” its new city card.
An investment of over 1.5 billion yuan was pointed out the action plan, as a special fund for the construction of “Design in Shunde”. The fund, invested by state-owned and social capital, will be used on six fields including expanding of the industry, innovation ability promotion, integration of different industries, importing and training of high-end talents and environment construction for the internationalization of industrial design.
Vital resources will put into a themed industrial park, to enlarge its floor area by 200,000 square meters in three years. Besides, the most important part is to further consummate the development planning of the GIDC. At the same time, a series of national industrial design institutes will be built to encourage leading design companies and to invent innovative original products.
Shunde is striving to build GIDC as the capital of industrial design in 2020, with a total of ten blocks in the boomtown all developing carriers and platforms for industrial design, and form a talent pool of over 10,000 industrial designers, to shape a batch of leading design brands and enterprises and develop dozens of industrial design-led creative industrial clusters.