1.1 Imitation and introduction: China's industrial design from the end of the 1970s to the end of the 1980s
In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the C*** made the decision to comprehensively implement reform and opening up, and began to establish a comprehensive system of material production, and China transformed itself from a collectivist economy to a market economy. After the reform and opening up, the planned economy era of a thousand one-sided product design has been completely unsuitable for the market demand. In the face of the weak technical and design foundation of domestic consumer manufacturing industry, the home appliance industry, which was the first to be marketized, adopted "technology introduction" and "joint venture" as the mode to participate in the market competition, and introduced advanced production lines and best-selling products from abroad. In the 1980s, the production lines of TV sets, refrigerators and other household appliances were mainly imported from Germany, Italy, Japan and other countries with developed industrial design. Today's Haier Group is based on the Qingdao Refrigerator Factory, which was established in 1984 with the technology of Liebherr. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, there was no such word as "industrial design" in China, and there was no such specialty and business as "industrial design" as defined now in the enterprises; in 1979, the China Industrial Design Association was founded as the China Association of Industrial Arts.
China's industrial design education also emerged in this period, in June 1977, the State Ministry of the First Machinery Industry approved the establishment of Hunan University, "mechanical modeling and manufacturing arts and crafts research laboratory", invited the Japanese industrial design experts to hold industrial design training courses, and established the first ergonomics laboratory in China; In 1987, "Industrial Design" was established. Wuxi Institute of Light Industry, Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, etc. also set up industrial design majors in this period. Because of the domestic higher design colleges and universities to follow the international trend, so the development of design theory is ahead of the industry's practice.
1.2 The Boom of the Home Appliance Industry: China's Industrial Design in the 1990s
Entering the 1990s, the buyer's market emerged, and consumers' choices became more and more abundant. In order to maintain product advantages, home appliance enterprises have industrial design as an important means of competition in the market, the first wave of China's industrial design came. 1994, Haier Group and Japan's G-K Design Group reached an agreement on the establishment of Haikao Design & Manufacturing Co. In 1995, Midea independently founded its own industrial design company, and in 1998, the "center" was restructured into an industrial design company, which was the first design office in China, and a breakthrough in the professionalization of China's industrial design was ushered in. In general, the design organization of Chinese enterprises is strong in teamwork, designers work more collectively behind the scenes, and the anonymity of products is more obvious.
Entering the 1990s, Chinese home appliance enterprises focused on building international brands, and the brand design of many enterprises went through the process of de-regionalization and de-industrialization, and the industrial design was transformed from a service product to a service brand. For example, Qingdao Refrigerator Factory was renamed Haier, Qingdao Television Factory was renamed Hisense. Enterprises such as Midea and Konka have hired famous design companies to design a new internationalized corporate image system, and there has been a trend of shifting from OEM to ODM, and laying the foundation for moving towards OBM. Chinese products have also begun to make their initial appearance in the international market.
II. Rising period: the beginning of the 21st century to the present
2.1 From "Made in China" to "Designed in China"
With the success of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the internationalization of the country, foreign products with excellent design, technology and quality have entered China, posing an unprecedented challenge to local manufacturing enterprises. With the success of China's accession to the WTO and internationalization, foreign products with excellent design, technology and quality have entered China, posing unprecedented challenges to local manufacturing enterprises. More and more enterprises have incorporated industrial design into their medium- and long-term development strategies, and design centers have gradually become independent from enterprise technology centers. On the other hand, the increase in the technological content of export products has strengthened the reliance of domestic technology-based enterprises on industrial design. Lenovo, CSR, Myriad Medical, etc. have all consolidated their product and brand advantages with the help of industrial design, which has made an important contribution to their internationalization strategy.
At the same time, the popularity of the Internet, mobile communications and smart products, the diversification of people's lifestyles, and the segmentation of demand have all added favorable conditions for the prosperity of industrial design. Trojan horse design, Pinwu logistics shape (PINWU) and other household brands, very good combination of Chinese culture, ideas and design of the times, to the modern life of daily necessities of the Chinese path, Rococo, bump (TUOOUT), guide (S.POINT), Corelli industrial design (crrevo) and other design institutions in the design market to stand out, General Motors, Samsung, LG, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other multinational companies and IDEO, FROG and other well-known design companies have set up design organizations in China, so that China's industrial design presents a blossoming ecology.
2.2 National Policy Support for Industrial Design
Since the new century, the central government's policy on industrial design has continued to increase in its commitment to turn "Made in China" into "Created in China". In May 2003, Wuxi (National) Industrial Design Park was established, which is the first industrial design-themed specialized park in China. 2006, China's industrial design "Red Star Award" was created. 2010, the Ministry of Industry and Information Industry of the State Council and other ministries, promulgated the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of Industrial Design. 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recognized 26 industrial design companies as the most important industrial design companies in China. In 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recognized 26 national enterprise industrial design centers and 6 industrial design enterprises. 2014, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Development of Cultural Creativity and Design Service Industry" document, which is a strong support for industrial design.
2.3 Achievements of China's Industrial Design in the 21st Century
Entering the 21st century, China's industrial design has gradually attracted extensive international attention. 2004 and 2005, Business Week magazine twice wrote a cover article on China's design. 2006, BusinessWeek's first selection of the "world's 60 best design colleges", Hunan University of Science and Technology was recognized as the "best design school" by BusinessWeek. In 2006, BusinessWeek named Hunan University, Tsinghua University, Tongji University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design among the world's 60 best design schools. 2008-2012, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing became members of UNESCO's Creative Cities Network and were honored as "DESIGN CAPITALS". In 2011, the Sino-Italian Design and Innovation Center was established, and in 2012 it hosted the Milan China Design and Innovation Fair. In terms of design competitions, Lenovo won the Red Dot award for "Best Global Design Team of 2013", and Chinese students have made numerous achievements in international competitions such as Red Dot, IF and IDEA.
Three. Opportunities and Trends: China's Industrial Design in the Era of Mobile Internet
3.1 Emphasis on User Experience and Service Attributes
Since the beginning of this century, China has transformed itself from the world's largest manufacturing country to the largest consumer country. Driven by both technology and the times, the intelligentization of industrial design centered on user experience and the combination of hardware and software have gained rapid momentum. Intelligent and interconnected products connect the four major life modules of personal, family, transportation and public **** services. In the area of personal products, China's traditional hardware companies and emerging technology companies*** are working together to develop wearable devices for monitoring, tracking, and body sensing, with a focus on daily life and entertainment experiences. In the field of home products, some leading brands in the industry are placing more emphasis on the sense of technology and design quality of their products, aligning themselves with the top fashion and taste of foreign countries, and implementing the strategy of open and platform-based innovation. Typical examples include Haier's brand CASARTE. In the transportation field represented by automobiles, automotive human-computer interaction has received great attention in recent years, achieving progressive development from one-button navigation, driving entertainment to natural interaction. Some universities have achieved certain research results in gestures, augmented reality, HUD, interaction aesthetics, car socialization and other concerns. And in the field of public ****, mobile community, tourism, health care and other service methods are quietly emerging, the relevant aspects of the product and mode of innovation perfectly reflects the combination of big data and design.
3.2 Transmission of Brand Value
The information age has given China's industrial design a historic opportunity to develop, making it rapidly expand from focusing on the product itself to services, business models, and other corporate design ecology, and some companies have realized leapfrog development, creating a number of core products and platform-level applications that are superior, marking the beginning of the transition to the OBM model for successful Chinese companies. For example, Huawei, which has shifted its product positioning from technology to consumer experience and improved its brand image through design, has seen rapid growth in its cell phone and application businesses, and was selected as one of the "100 Most Valuable Brands in the World" by Interband in 2014. Together with Alibaba, Huawei became the world's No. 1 in the industry in 2013. It is especially worth mentioning that millet cell phone, in more than three years, the company with the "hardware + software + Internet" model, Internet thinking to create a corporate design ecology, and the use of its brand effect into the related industries, integration of cell phone peripheral products application scenarios, through the design of the control and experience of the ecosystem to build the construction of the ecological chain. More and more enterprises have also started to create user experience supply chain and brand DNA on the basis of OBM.
3.3 Design and Social Innovation
The background of Internetization not only promotes the prosperity of the industry, but also provides a new way to solve the many contradictions caused by the social development in China's national conditions. At present, the inherent problems of urban communities and the imbalance of urban and rural resources are more prominent, so the government, universities and industry are exploring the use of design thinking to help promote social innovation, focusing on topics such as community building, life services, distribution of agricultural products and the revitalization of the regional economy.