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Quality, not flashiness, marks good design
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A recent visit to the BMW Brand Experience Centre in Shanghai, where this year’s Red Dot award winners were on display — including three BMW cars and the building itself — brought to mind the catchphrase that good design is good business.
Red Dot awards are considered the Oscars of industrial design. The awards attract renowned global designers from different fields.
DesignworksUSA, a think-tank fully owned by the BMW Group and a design agency for outside companies, certainly understands the quality of good looks. At the exhibition, Magnus Aspegren, creative director of DesignworksUSA’s Shanghai Office, discussed with Shanghai Daily how design can be used as a powerful tool to lift a company’s game.
A buzzword you cannot escape in China these days is tu hao, which describes those who have deep pockets but not necessarily refined tastes. What do you think makes a premium design classy?
A: I think it is experience that sets a premium brand apart from a non-premium one. A good premium design should have different layers of fine detail, like the iPad with its physical appearance and user interface. To increase the experience level, you don’t need to make everything the flashiest, but everything must be high quality, inside and out.
Does “less is more” apply to automotive design?
A: It is just one way to increase premium level. Different products have different expressions. You might want a commercial car to be a little bit restrained and a sports car to be more flamboyant. You need to design what is appropriate for each product. Design is not just about making things look beautiful. It needs to take into account how a product is manufactured, used, maintained and disposed.
The market positioning of a “premium” brand can easily end up as hollow rhetoric if there are no convincing details to bolster the image. How would you translate “premium” into design language?
A: When we are working on products, whether it is for BMW or an airplane company or a yacht company, we develop a brand language first if they don’t have one. Then we use it to shape consumers’ three reads — from seeing a product from a distance and scoping it out, to actually touching, feeling and smelling it.
In our recent work on the first-class cabin seats for Singapore Airlines, we paid very close attention to the third read, making sure each of those exquisite little stitches gets the brand message across.
Last summer, BMW launched the long-wheelbase version of its 3 Series sporty sedans as a tailor-made lineup for China. Since then, it has received praise for its increased rear-seat comfort and complaints about its compromised sportiness. As a relatively independent designer, what do you think of this decision made by BMW headquarters?
A: We understand there is a need here for more cabin space to carry families and colleagues around. What is nice now is that there are two different versions available for sale. And I think the performance of the stretched 3 series is just as good as that of the standard one. Many people once doubted whether the X sports utility series of BMW could stay true to what the brand is, but it turned out to be very dynamic. Don’t judge a car before you try it.
There are many cheap, low-quality cars running on the Chinese streets. What do you think is the biggest reason behind that?
A: Perhaps some of their manufacturers don’t appreciate the value of design. They put that at the bottom of considerations, compared with budget control. You need to have passion and love for what you do, and that is what makes a difference.
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