Driven by the new wave of consumption, "design" seems to have become an unavoidable topic.
On the one hand, companies must be close to the aesthetic tastes of contemporary young people; on the other hand, they also need to work hard on brand tone, product architecture, purchasing experience, etc.
And all of this involves design.
But looking at the ceramic industry, many companies only focus on brand image and products when talking about design. The former is to deepen the brand positioning to fit the current market trend, while the latter is to upgrade the product color, craftsmanship, visual packaging, etc. to match the positioning. .
The purpose is to penetrate deeper into retail, home decoration, designers and other channels through design power.
In this regard, Tong Huiming, a professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, once mentioned that "design-driven brand" and "design-driven brand" are not the same thing.
Brand Driven by Design (BDD), referred to as BDD, not only guides the brand forward through design, but also emphasizes a new brand type.
Furthermore, BDD is a brand-new thinking model that uses design as the underlying logic to lay out brand actions.
Airmont, who is only four years old, is a practitioner of BDD. Brand founder and chief product officer CPO Wei Bezan once emphasized that being a design-driven brand is the ultimate goal of Airmont, and the ultimate goal is to create a sustainable brand. , even systems spanning the product life cycle.
Airmount Chief Product Officer Wei Bezan< /span>
So, on the road to implementing the BDD model, Airmont needs to rely on a more professional and powerful design company to continuously enhance its brand potential.
To this end, on the morning of September 27, Airmont held signing ceremonies with He Guohui Design (HGH), Italian Stylgraph, and Chuanhe Yizhu Design.
At this point, a design-driven creative brand, the first BDD model in the ceramic industry based on the "1×3" alliance, began to emerge.
To this end, the editor specially interviewed representatives from three design companies before the event to understand their design concepts and opened different "doors to design" through their perspectives.
01
Ho Kwok Fai’s brand is also a human being, born from the heart
This is a senior graphic designer in Foshan, known as "Brother Hui".
In 1990, the first batch of graphic design students graduated from Foshan University, and Hui Ge was one of them.
Since then, the graduation ceremony has become the starting point for Brother Hui to run wildly on the road of design.
Until now, more than 30 years of experience in the field of design have allowed Hui Ge to reach his thirties in the field of design. The He Guohui Design Co., Ltd. he founded has also developed into one of the top 100 brand design organizations in China and a well-known local brand design company in Foshan. At the same time, Hui Ge is also one of the co-founders of Guangdong Heshanji.
He Guohui Design and Creative Director·He Guohui< /p>
As a senior in the design circle, the responsibility of promoting local design and guiding industry changes naturally falls on him.
To this end, Huige also designed the LOGO for the Foshan Association of Designers (FAD). Its purpose is to mobilize participants, promoters and leaders in the design industry through the platform of industry associations, stimulate local design power, and enable more emerging designers to embark on the road to sustainable development.
But what is even more worth mentioning is that the “272 Gallery”, which has recently attracted much attention from people inside and outside the design circle, not only collects works from the four giants of original Danish medieval furniture, but also through careful conception and layout, finally created the first-ever national furniture store in the country. Danish secondhand furniture fair.
One of the curators is Hui Ge and several of his designer friends.
It is understood that 272 Gallery is oriented towards collecting, curating and sharing medieval furniture and aesthetic artifacts to build a diverse dialogue space where art and life blend.
Hui Ge hopes that 272 Gallery can provide another communication platform for designers, and at the same time promote the beauty of design, thereby driving the design awareness of the new generation, and ultimately promoting the strength of local design.
272 Gallery
Indeed, when I visited 272 Gallery, I felt that it was more like a local designer’s back garden.
However, in the first week of its launch, due to waves of young ladies coming to check in, 272 Gallery suddenly went out of business in Foshan. The quality of exhibitions has dropped sharply, and Hui Ge can only implement an appointment viewing mode.
After all, as an enthusiast of medieval furniture, he really couldn’t bear the furniture he treasured to be used as a shooting background.
During the interview, when asked "Does it feel a bit lonely to organize such a high-standard medieval furniture exhibition in Foshan?" Hui Ge said frankly, no.
In fact, Hui Ge also gained a group of like-minded fans. For example, designers come from all over the country, designer study tour groups organized by local enterprises in Foshan, and people from all walks of life who are curious about medieval furniture.
What impressed Hui Ge the most was that a young man working in a design and art book publishing house rode from Guangzhou to visit the exhibition. When 272 Gallery held the Noguchi Isamu Light Exhibition last year, many visitors from all over the country arranged Foshan Shunde Art Museum and 272 Gallery to check in on the same day.
Although Foshan does not have abundant designer resources like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, its insistence on producing high-standard exhibitions contains a deeper meaning.
Returning to the profession itself, Hui Ge’s design philosophy is “to be born from the heart”.
Brother Hui mentioned that brands are also people, and they come from the heart. This unique design concept always runs through his works. Through insight into the brand's unique elements and corporate culture, including the style trend it advocates, he then creates design plans for it.
It is precisely this concept that enables Huige to better control the balance between creation and market, and assists the brand in optimizing its image from the inside out, ultimately promoting the improvement of brand competitiveness.
Positioning of Ho Kwok Fai Design Co., Ltd.
Not only that, "the relationship comes from the heart" is also one of the evaluation dimensions for Huige to choose a brand.
Because in the torrent of social development in the past, many companies' demand for design has changed from product brochures to full-case design today. In the process of this demand replacement, different companies' different attitudes towards design have been layered. .
Obviously, companies that pay more attention to design will respect design more and use the power of design to deepen their brand positioning, build product systems, and create product application spaces consistent with their image.
Brother Hui mentioned: "A company that is truly willing to pay for design must be obsessed with design, and such a company is the key to achieving progressive and effective communication with designers."
Airmont and He Guohui Design have reached a strategic cooperation to help Airmont’s brand image Comprehensive upgrade
02
Shi Dihuafu and Zhang Yuling awaken the company's star products
As the cornerstone of enterprise development, product design companies are naturally indispensable organizations for enterprises.
The Stiva Ceramics Design Company from Sassuolo, Italy, was founded in 1984, which not only accumulated 37 years of product design experience, but also established branches in China, Spain, South Korea, India, and Iran, giving it greater control. to global ceramic tile trends, and then incorporate them into specific design projects.
Stewarf Headquarters
In 2013, Stywaff China Branch was officially established.
Since then, Zhang Yuling, director of Italy's Stivafu (Asia Pacific), has opened up the Chinese market and is conveying Italian design concepts.Basically, it is integrated into the product system of local enterprises.
Zhang Yuling mentioned that a good design may be worth more than the physical equipment placed in the factory.
The star product that awakens the company is precisely the company's positioning.
Looking back at the golden age of the ceramic industry, demand was greater than supply, and the productivity of ceramic factories at that time determined brand power. However, as market competition intensifies, brand competition has become the main theme, and each household's flagship product has become the "panacea" to seize the market.
Even so, in Zhang Yuling’s eyes, this is just the 1.0 era of product evolution.
If you want to create a star product that is unique to your brand, it must actually penetrate into the entire product structure, and the product structure itself must be highly relevant to the brand positioning, main business channels, and corresponding consumer groups.
Zhang Yuling, Director of Italian Shidiwafu (Asia Pacific)
In fact, we can see from the process of how Steve Wolf serves ceramic companies, how they help companies create star products.
First, Zhang Yuling will lead the team to enter the company and understand the company culture, positioning, product structure, proportion of each channel, and user portraits through in-depth communication. Ultimately sorting out which style of product is the focus of the company's attack on the market.
Secondly, as a product design company with a global vision, Stiva will propose product design directions to the company based on the annual trend elements integrated by the Italian headquarters, such as texture, color, texture, texture, etc.
More importantly, Steve Wolf can strike a balance between contemporary market demand and advanced trend design, and one of its cores is the closed-loop production of products.
Zhang Yuling mentioned that in the field of product design, there are roughly two types of people, one is craftsmen, and the other is designers.
The former is based on the innovation of technical equipment to restore existing textures one-to-one, while the latter tends to further lead the innovation of products through original handmade products and unique product textures and textures.
Handmade products and small samples
In addition, designers will work with scene designers to jointly study which colors and specifications are suitable for products with different textures, and then apply them in different spaces, ultimately creating products with spatial levels.
The so-called atmosphere brought by the spatial hierarchy is an experience that is in line with the aesthetics of contemporary young people.
Obviously, the closed loop of a product not only starts with the design of elements and textures, but also involves colors, specifications, and scene applications, and finally circulates into the hands of consumers.
In addition, Zhang Yuling also believes that the closed loop of products should take environmental protection into account. For example, before a manufacturer produces a certain series of products, they must ensure that they can be distributed instead of being backlogged in warehouses. So when the product is no longer used, is the total cost of recycling and degradation far lower than the total cost of production and circulation?
And this also leads to the conclusion that companies that pay more attention to closed-loop products can actually alleviate the uncertainty caused by the future. After all, the stronger the product closed loop is, the more solid the company's product architecture will be, thereby reducing the cost of product development and easing extensibility problems such as product SKU complexity.
It is true that the key to awakening a company's star products is to find a closed loop of products that match the company's own development.
Airmont and Italy's Stilover reach strategic cooperation to help Airmont products Comprehensive upgrade of the structural system
As we all know, even a ready-to-use ceramic tile can only be a semi-finished product in front of consumers. After all, only tiles that have gone through the laying process can be defined as a successful delivery.
But among 100 successful deliveries, there will obviously be different levels of experience. Consumers can achieve delivery because of the successful purchase and successful laying of tiles, or they can also achieve satisfactory delivery after purchasing tiles with aesthetic design and laying them in the corresponding space with reasonable matching.
Then, space design is particularly important in the entire delivery chain of ceramic tiles.
Because good space design can not only enhance product value and speed up consumers' decision-making time to purchase bricks, but also capture consumers' reputation based on the brand's overall design control.
Anton, the design director of Chuanhe Yizhu, put forward his own space design concept - a peaceful and beautiful environment, which is also the design direction of the exhibition hall of Airmont's new headquarters.
Among them, "jing" represents the different levels of artistic conception contained in different spaces., and are distributed in the overall building in an orderly manner; "good" represents the tolerance of space, which means that "things" in the same space can be integrated into one; "quiet" represents that the overall space gives people a sense of tranquility and comfort The feeling; "beauty" is based on the first three points, and finally highlights the beauty of the overall space.
An Dong, Design Director of Chuanhe Yizhu
However, regarding the frequent hijacking of terminal traffic, Anton emphasized that the key to space design lies in how to create commercial value.
He said that to create valuable space aesthetics, we must first consider the relationship between investors, consumers, and designers.
Investors pay attention to square footage efficiency, that is, whether the store can attract, maintain, and store traffic; consumers want to enjoy it, and the quality of the product and the beauty of the space are the key; and designers, based on the needs of the two, build an effective Profit value space design.
And Anton, who has accumulated rich experience in catering space design, knows that user flow trajectory is a core for store sales.
The catering industry not only pursues "table turnover rate", but also has to carefully set up some internet celebrity check-in elements and take into account the service radius of all service personnel, so that it can ultimately win good reputation from users again and again.
Looking back at the ceramics industry, in the past, terminal stores had to win large orders, which had a lot to do with the luxurious decoration of the store. However, as terminal sales costs increase, traditional methods no longer work. If you want to continue to delve into the retail market, changing the spatial pattern through design is undoubtedly a key.
Case work of Anton, the design director of Chuanhe Yizhu
Anton mentioned that the logic of catering space design can actually be applied to the ceramic industry. For example, if you want to attract traffic, the store must create attractive check-in elements, and to maintain traffic, you need to start from the user flow trajectory.To think about the space layout from the perspective of how to reasonably display high-value, mass-market, and high-volume products, it is necessary to set aside functional areas such as comfortable living rooms and interactive halls to store traffic.
Ultimately, the power of space design drives store sales.
Airmont and Chuanhe Yizhu have reached a strategic cooperation to become Airmont Product display applications are fully empowered
04
Conclusion
It must be said that as a practitioner of the BDD model, Airmont did not take the overall design layout lightly.
Brand founder Wei Bezan said bluntly that in the future, Airmont will use design as a strategic driver and play a driving and leading role in all aspects such as business model, brand tone, product positioning, and brand development direction.
Behind the scenes, it is actually centered on user experience, integrating the power of design into all of Airmont’s business activities, and ultimately seizing the minds of consumers.
