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Editor's note:
The 131st Canton Fair opened online today. The ten-day fair features record-high of over 2.9 million products from 16 categories highlighting innovation, green development and more. The Canton Fair Design Award (CF Award) helps discover many cutting-edge products combining both design and business value. Recently, GDToday and Southcn.com have interviewed jury members of CF Award about their insight on the fair and the product design trends.
"I will expect to see the combination of good design concept and development," said Davide Conti, an Italian designer and a jury member of the Canton Fair Design Award (CF Award), when talking about the 131st Canton Fair, opening on April 15, 2022, in a recent interview with GDToday.
In China, in addition to designing, Conti participates as a juror for international competitions, he served at the CF Award jury in 2019 and 2021 and impressed by some awarded products with innovation and technology.
Conti stressed that a good product design should be both functional and beautiful. He also suggests Chinese local enterprises to remember traditional Chinese art and invest in new designs for making better products.
Davide Conti (Photo provided to GDToday)
GDToday: The upcoming 131st Canton Fair will be held online. As a jury member of CF Awards, what kinds of products will you pay close attention to?
Davide Conti: Technology of course plays a strategic place, but without a good design concept and development, it's nothing. So, for that reason I will expect to see this kind of combination, the implementation of best design ideas with the best modern technology to create products can help the life of people in daily routine.
GDToday: What is the trend of product design have you discovered from previous selection of CF Awards?
Davide Conti: Last edition all the jury were impressed about the improvement of the design skills of the designers, especially because we saw the implementation of technology in many new products.
One-time all-degradation vegetable tray. (Photo by Canton Fair website)
Actually, I was happy to see one very simple product (one-time all-degradation vegetable tray) last year stayed in the Best of the Best Awards. It is a biodegradable dish mainly made by whole potato, starch and linen fiber. That shows a well done design process between new innovation technology, good concept and results.
That's a good example of how a designer can use the technology now and that's why I hope also in future to see many of these kinds of design approaches in products of the global market.
GDToday: What can be called a good product design in your point of view?
Davide Conti: A good design is not just about esthetic, it is a combination of functionality and beauty, between technical and esthetic skills.
Art is only about aesthetic skills, not functional. But design is more, you need to pay attention of both sides. Recently technical skills are included to implement technology and smart system more frequently. But to implement technology systems in bad ideas or bad concepts can be bad design.
GDToday: Is the industrial design pushing forward the technology upgrade, or the technology upgrade pushing forward the industrial design development?
Davide Conti: The tech companies are working very hard to improve the capability of single technology and designers as well are looking for the best solutions to improve the quality of design products.
If the industry system is sane, that will be a natural progress together between industrial design company, technology company and factory. Most importantly, it is to remind the entrepreneurs to work together and find the best way to balance the two things, and let the designers do research and experiment with new technologies applied to their design ideas.
GDToday: From the perspective of the jury, what is the relation between the design and market value of a product? Do you have any suggestions to enterprises in China to enhance their designing strength?
Davide Conti: The relation is very strong. Think you have to buy some shower gel for example, then you find one is white bottle without logo and design shape, another one is very beautiful, with amazing logo, colors and nice bottle shape. Probably 99% people will choose to buy the beautiful one even though it's more expensive. That's the power of design, but maybe inside the bottle there is same shower gel.
People will always pay attention to that, because humanity always looks of the beauty and search the beauty everywhere. That's the easiest answer, to suggest Chinese enterprises invest in the design.
Entrepreneurs must remember the amazing Chinese art, the culture or ceramic, the wood and all beautiful products artisans created in Chinese history.
Author: Will
Editor: Wing, Nan, Jerry
