Samsung Electronics’ “Armani Phone”
Design Matters in Every Single Aspect of Daily Life



By Tim Alper
Contributing Writer

Think that Korea is full of gray, lifeless buildings? Take a stroll down by the Han River in Seoul, or around Haeundae Beach in Busan ― some of the buildings there look like they have come straight from a Star Wars film.

And believe it or not, new developments in Seoul, Busan and beyond are starting to make not just Koreans, but the rest of the world, sit up and take notice. In two years' time, Seoul will be not only the capital of Korea, but also the capital of world design.

The exciting news comes as the International Design Alliance ― a collaboration between the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design and the International Council of Graphic Design Associations ― announced that their biannual World Design Capital award will go to Seoul in 2010.

But design is not limited to expensive, fancy new high-rises by the waterfront; it extends to just about every aspect of modern life, and especially to technology.

Design now matters in every single aspect of daily life, whether you are in Daegu or Dubai, Bucheon or Botswana.

LG made the world suddenly aware of Korean design capabilities when it released the Chocolate phone, followed by the Prada phone, both of which placed a lot of emphasis on its looks. And the Chocolate phone, released in 2006, scooped design awards _ four of them in total, with customers aplenty voting with their wallets all around the world.

After LG had picked up its award from Design for Asia, Jin Kim, vice president of LG Electronics' Corporate Design Center, said, ``We've all heard that `less is more.' One of the key success elements of the Chocolate phone was its simple and minimalist design.''

The Design Council is a design database in the Britain. They amass statistics on design. According to them, design is ``integral'' to 36 percent of British businesses they classify as ``rapidly growing.'' However, among businesses they rated as ``static," only 7 percent said they rated design highly. They also found that businesses increasing their annual design spending are twice as likely to see their revenues grow.

Park Jung-yeon is a designer at Hankook Research, the largest marketing research company in Korea. Park believes that companies that invest in good design can reap the financial rewards. She says, ``iRiver is Korea's biggest-selling mp3 player producer at the moment. Koreans have a huge amount of choice when it comes to mp3 players. But they caught the attention of customers through sensible, well-thought out designs that have captured the imaginations of customers.''

Ancort, a Russian mobile producer, created a stir in the world's press when it released a $1.3 million phone, encrusted with diamonds and gold. But though the Ancort phone is easily dismissed as a freakish status symbol for the hyper-rich, it is by no means the only one of its kind.

Other companies like them exist, and exist by the bucketload, too. Grosso makes gold and diamond-detailed phones that range in price from $4,000 to $6,500, while Mobiado markets phones made from rare Cocobolo and Honduras Rosewood hardwoods. In fact, according to the Mobiado Web site, its latest phones have been sold out, even though their handsets were being sold, if reports are to be believed, at around $2,100 a pop.

It is growing evidence that design is now a customer requirement in electrical goods. People see things like mobile phones, mp3 players and satellite navigation systems not only as practical appliances. They now see them as accessories, too. If they are badly designed, many believe that they are not worth a second look.

Though these very pricey phones are clearly aimed at society's elite, other mobile makers on the market are now starting to spend big on design. Following the success of LG's Prada phone, Samsung Electronics last year unveiled its SGH-P520 phone, designed in collaboration with Giorgio Armani.

Whether this one-upmanship will result in all-out global designer goods-mobile phone war is yet to be seen, but now IT and design have crossed paths, it seems little can stop them.

However, mobile phones are relative newcomers to the IT deign revolution. Laptops have already been at this game for ages. Luxury carmaker Lamborghini was drafted in to help Asus, a Taiwanese laptop computer maker, dazzle its potential buyers.

Fellow Taiwanese laptop maker Acer was not to be outdone, either. Ferrari, no less, was enlisted to help with their 3,000 model computer.

Design was as an industry that did not even really exist only a few decades ago. But design plus IT equals very big bucks indeed. Top web designers can earn well upwards of $80,000 a year, though their jobs only started being advertised in the past few years.

The old-fashioned view of the IT person was some nerdy type with thick glasses, who sat hunched over a computer, spewing numbers and muttering about processor speed and megabytes. Now an IT person might just as well be an uber-cool designer in a green velour polo-neck who thinks in pictures and speaks in sound-bites.

Sitting on the shelf, what a product looks like is probably what will make a buyer pick it and not its competitor, and most electronics companies recognize this fact, which is why they are prepared to splash the cash on design and design research.

But is there a risk that companies will go too far in their drive to pour money into design? Will a pretty box disguise an impractical computer? If more money is going into design, it is being taken away from somewhere else in a company. Is good design set to end up taking away from the quality of the product?

Hwang Jin-a, designer at Insamobile, a Korean company who makes mobile phone software, does not think so. She thinks that regardless of these concerns, design is of vital importance to Korea in particular.

She says, ``Without design, we are nothing. We don't have oil or gas in this country; we don't have vast manpower resources, either. All we have is brains and labor. So we have to be able to export our design ideas in order to survive.''