Understanding The Design Rules Of The Home To Improve Product Design
CASE STUDY
Until ReD began working with Samsung in 2006, the market-leading company’s design philosophy borrowed heavily from Japan. Sharp lines, cool edge lighting, and a slick aesthetic celebrated modernity–a glorification of technology in the home.
This changed dramatically when Samsung hired ReD to help incorporate Scandinavian design for use in a new line of audio-visual products. ReD took Samsung’s designers on a field trip through Scandinavia and Holland to help them discover the milder, softer aesthetics of Northern Europe.
The Scandinavia trip inspired the Samsung team to take a similar trip within Korea, which helped them develop their own distinct visual design philosophy–one that gave up the aesthetics of technology to instead reflect the aesthetics of the home. (At the time, Samsung revamped its popular Bordeaux TV line to take on more generous curves and softer lights.) More importantly, the process of first looking outward and then looking inward, allowed them build the confidence to take more provocative design steps, such as launching the “Touch of Color” initiative, which blended a hint of amber into the frame of their 2008 line-up of LCD HDTVs.
Today Samsung is revered as a company that others look to for design originality.
For Samsung ReD has completed numerous projects related to user-centric technologies for the television and mobile space.
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