11 October  2007

Speakers:

Yolanda Conyers, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of Global Integration and Diversity, Lenovo, USA Catherine Ladousse, EMEA Communication Executive, Lenovo, France Anke Mosbacher, EMEA Marketing Executive, Lenovo, Switzerland Nelly Rodi, President, Nelly Rodi SA, France

The mysteries behind the design of everyday objects that millions of consumers around the world take for granted were unraveled by Nelly Rodi in a enlightening debate in the Discovery Hall. Rodi, who set up her Paris design consultancy 27 years ago, explained how the concept of design could be broken down into three distinct areas that reflected people's attitudes to the world around them: low design, emotional design and intelligent design.

Rodi outlined what she saw as the elements of 21st century life which defined a consumer's overall approach to design as ubiquitous depression over the level of violence in society, doubts about the usefulness of the products and services that we use, a fear of society that she called 'phobocracy' and the constant search for ways to express our identity.

"As a result, consumers are constantly looking for a kind of rebirth, or they are on a quest for trust in the products they use," she said. "There is a paradox in people's minds between reason, technique and aesthetics, and they are constantly trying to pull it all together."

Explaining the principles of design to executives from the Lenovo hi-tech company, Rodi described how low design was the kind of creativity that reflected reassurance in objects, where the key elements were function and essence, and the object was reduced to something that was neutral, puritan and free of artifice. "Low design means getting right down to the DNA of the object, to create something that is trans-cultural and trans-generational,” she explained. "The resulting object is simple, functional, almost Amish, although it can also be sensual and organic, because even in low design the senses of touch and smell are important."

With emotional design, humour and fantasy creep into the creative process to counterbalance the functional and technological elements, Rodi said. She added: "These designs can be surrealist, surprising, perturbing or even disorienting, but they never leave you indifferent.  This kind of design is popular in emerging countries like China, India and Dubai.

"It can also be dreamlike, luscious, aristocratic and provocative, mixing culture and epoch.  It can be exaggerated, hybrid in its aesthetic, illusional or trompe d'oeil to bring the consumer to new dreams.

"This vision of design can then be pushed to make it subversive, dissident, transgressive, bizarre, bewitching and sometimes fetishistic."

The final area of intelligent design represented an awareness of resources and recycling and offered alternative solutions and an eco-conscience.  It was responsible, ethical, social and global in its outlook, Rodi said.

She added: "But just because something is ecological, it doesn't mean it has to look cheap or be aimed at a lower market.  Ecology is not a form of punishment and recycling can have a sense of humour. "Intelligent design simply means diversity and difference are favoured, making objects transmissive and sensitive."

Rodi said design was not a 'one track' business but was instead made up of many different visions, and the profusion of approaches echoed the multiple modes of embodying modernity. She explained: "The new aesthetic languages invent both the good and the beautiful, and as design has many ambitions, it also produces 'better-being' and 'better-living'.

"With its view of the world of objects, design is now promoted as a conveyor of progress, technological and societal evolution, and above all quality of life." Design, she explained, should accompany and reveal our quest for sense, and our justification of the respectable and the fair. It was the responsibility of design to ensure that our everyday consumption had a sense, but still remained lucid, she added.

Lenovo vice-president Yolanda Conyers said design in her company had become a key element in the drive for competiveness. She told participants: “Design builds trust, and without trust we can’t be successful.” Rodi added:  "Design is the glorious mission of offering a soul to inanimate objects and reanimating the world.

"Design imagines all kinds of unusual scenarios to promote intelligent, sensitive consumption. It appears as a promise, an engagement, perhaps even a utopia.  The user is placed at the centre of the creative process,  providing an answer to the vital need for renewal.”

"To me and to my friends at Lenovo, design offers a very particular breath of fresh air to the world surrounding us.  This laboratory of future dreams of new worlds reconciles us with tomorrow by restoring our confidence in it. Design is like a gentle, peaceful revolution in a world full of brutes.  It soothes our lives, its vitality making the world a better place."