-- Tong Huiming (Professor, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Design Branch)
Twenty years ago, a group of experts and scholars dedicated to China’s industrial design business gathered in Fuzhou, feeling the need for the upcoming opening of China’s inevitable industrial design and advocating the formation of a Chinese designer’s own organization.
Twelve years ago, after 9 years of tempering, their wish was finally realized in Beijing - the establishment of China Industrial Design Association. As a result, China's industrial design business has taken a big step forward.
Twenty years later, we regret to see that there is still a huge gap between the status quo of design today and the buildings at the time. Although people can use this decade's progress in graphic design to demonstrate the achievements of design, it is still impossible to avoid the core of the word “industrial†– the design lag in industrial manufacturing, as well as the practice in this area. The silence of "excellent design".
Those who have been exposed to the development of industrial design in these two decades have inevitably experienced the bad feelings of confusion, anger, irritability, Sui and Tang dynasties, and indifference brought about by the strong conflict between ideals and reality. More people, after perceiving the principle of “walking around with the red lightâ€, began to circumvent the more cherished “environmental design†and “advertising design†from the original “industrial design can save the nationâ€. "CI design" fast lane. To this day, among the representatives who participated in the inaugural meeting of the China Industrial Design Association, there were not many people who had persisted in insisting on the “dry†industrial design. However, there were a batch of newcomers who continued to join this group with “colorsâ€. Team.
However, if we cannot examine our own ideals in a pragmatic manner and analyze our own reality with a development perspective and reflect on the tortuous course we have experienced, we can better balance the conflict between our ideals and reality and we will not be able to find our own industry. The road to design.
An ideal academic community
In the past two decades, the industrial design community in China has completed a radical change from theory to practice.
If we say that the origin and development of industrial design in Western countries is accompanied by a revolution in science and technology and a wave of commodity economy, it is a natural process that conforms to the laws of things and follows the trajectory of market economy. Then, in the early 1980s, The introduction of industrial design ideas in China is more of a "superrealistic" color, and it is a rational call from a small number of forward-thinking scholars that have engulfed the manufacturing revolutionary storm in mainland China. Rereading those published articles published in the early 1980s, people will find that ideal goals such as “excellent designâ€, “design cultureâ€, and “individual design†that were proposed based on the more mature commodity social environment are in progress with Chinese society. The "construction of foreign-funded enterprises," "introduction of capital equipment," "filling the consumption gap," and other "needless" level of the industrial economy and market hot spots is how out of step.
Therefore, in the entire 1980s before the “oversupply†situation in the Chinese market, the lack of highly competitive living pressure in the manufacturing industry, and the government’s busy planning for a large-scale economic structure, all appeals and advocacy for industrial design in the academic world are It looks so pale.
Although we can use thousands of reasons to appeal to the society to pay attention to the scientific nature of China's manufacturing industry, we must understand the importance of industrial design from the experience of the West and the newly industrialized countries in Asia, but the lag in economic development in decades has caused China's manufacturing industry to re The low starting point at take-off, and the limitations of the “creation†of the company’s creators and decision makers, have convinced Chinese companies to “imitation†Western products for a long time to pass through and cannot be bypassed in product development. process. Although we can use the official language to describe this process as "digestion and absorption", in essence, it must manifest itself as disregarding and excluding its own design power. The most painful thing for the academic community is to see the essence of things but there is nothing they can do about it.
In terms of theoretical orientation, Chinese design theorists have little knowledge of China's social structure, the concept of mass values, and the structure of the enterprise. This has led to the introduction of industrial design ideas in China, superficial superficial purely theoretical teaching, and determined that the academic community is promoting industrial design. At the time of career, invariably diluting its “application†theme, weakening its value of solving real problems, exaggerating its imaginary role of shaping the future, and giving it too much idealism. The academic community has overemphasized its "cultural" value and aesthetic value, and objectively delayed the company's early recognition of the economic value of industrial design.
Many design scholars have demonstrated their courage to participate in design practice. Perhaps because of the defects in its own knowledge structure, it leads to little understanding and understanding of the economy, the market, and Chinese society. They intentionally or unintentionally evade the entry and resolution of real design problems, and conceal their own practical ability. Look down on Chinese companies in a seemingly detached and noble manner. Complaining that companies are short-sighted, they lament that they are out of time, accusing the government of lacking understanding, but they have no responsibility. When they once faced with the complicated realities of farmers entrepreneurs who have just “washed their feet in the fieldsâ€, crude production equipment, rough processing techniques, market concepts that are price-driven, and less “elegant†consumer tastes, Immediately felt that "design" can not start and know what to do. It is such a kind of over-idealized understanding of the industrial design business and the deep-seated psychology of solving social reality problems that the invisible barrier to practice has been established in the academic world.
The development of industrial design in the 1980s showed an idealized and theoretically staged feature. The important reason was the influence of western design concepts.
The emergence and development of the Western industrial design business is a natural process that accompanies the social transformation, technological evolution, and market concept transformation. However, the "modernization" of modern Chinese society's public life has not experienced a long process of natural evolution. Chinese consumers have not experienced the century-long evolution of the rotation of washing machines from wooden gear drives to electric motors, nor do they know what happened to color TVs, refrigerators, and tape recorders that flowed into life when our country door opened to the world in the early 1980s. In this kind of history, they think that these industrial products are of course "this way." Therefore, in essence, our modern civilization today is based on the development of Western science and technology.
This social material civilization premise also determines that modern Chinese design education system must be modeled on the West. Designers' training modes, design thinking methods, design style styles, and design evaluation standards all have strong Western colors. Therefore, whether it is the pioneer of advocating Chinese industrial design 20 years ago or the designer who is today, it is inevitable that Western designers will use the eyes of Western designers to view Chinese companies, the Chinese market, and Chinese industrial products, and they eagerly hope that they will use them. The design methods, design concepts, styles and styles that developed in developed countries have evolved over the past 100 years to solve and deal with the "national product" design issues that are being transferred to industrial society.
Therefore, scholars consciously or unconsciously exaggerate the status of modern design in commodity society, create a utopian social vision created by designers, and breed a strong "design can change everything" hallucinations. With heroic consciousness.
This awareness in the academic world is very different from the understanding of design in the real world of consumers, entrepreneurs, and government officials in China. Because designers cannot change their standpoints, they try to use the other's values ​​to think about the interests of the company's development from the perspective of the company, and to design an existing production condition, capital investment, quality standards, cost indicators, and sales. New products that may have better market effects and bring huge benefits to enterprises under the constraints of prices, market trends, etc., cannot enable entrepreneurs to understand the “value†of industrial design from the sales figures of statistical reports, and how can Let entrepreneurs show enough "respect" to us, and pay attention to industrial design business?
Recurring talks and cumbersome word citations have become increasingly boring for a long time, and the design community itself has gradually lost interest. By the early 1990s, the empty theoretical discussions on prosperity in the mid to late 1980s had gradually declined.
In general, the will and perseverance of the industrial design community is not tough enough. In the case of failure to overcome the practice of this "fortress," people have not been able to theoretically reflect on their basic issues, but with the new design industry. The appearance of hotspots repositioned and shifted the ideals and interests. Many former industrial design scholars have emerged in the waves of "Circular Arts Hot," "Ad Hot," and "CI Hot" in the 1990s. His new position shows a new ideal of enthusiasm, which is puzzling: Did the enthusiasm of industrial design in the past really come from the heart?
Two realistic industry
When the industrial design community was paralyzed by vague theories, the consumer goods manufacturing industry in China began its own creation in the 1980s that was outside the gate of practice. It is not based on a beautiful ideal, but it is initiated by the actual economic leverage, market-based, and the pursuit of material wealth. However, the scientific and technological foundation for this kind of creation is not "zero", but it is developed in various ways such as "introduction of technology", "joint production" and "sample processing". Although our starting point is relatively low from the perspective of modern consumption, the starting point for the transformation of “living modernization†at the starting point of production technology is not low. Broadly speaking, it is one of the market hot spots created by the manufacturing industry, which essentially promotes the progress of the country and the improvement and improvement of the quality of life of the general public.
However, the two characteristics of “low consumption level†and “high starting point of product technology†demonstrated by this creation process have always existed in the process of transforming manufacturing from traditional planned economy to modern market economy. At the same time, the design of various types of industrial products has not been designed by Chinese designers themselves according to the wishes of design scholars. Instead, the “introduction†of production technologies has been imported from the West.
Because of the "introduction", Chinese people's consumer life has achieved a leap from "lagging" to "well-to-do" in a short period of time.