Lumina Pico Basestation designed by Shenzhen Rone Design Co. Ltd. File photos

Li Weiling

Wang Yuanyuan, Zhao Ziqiao

cheekywang@hotmail.com

SHENZHEN-DESIGNED product Lumina Pico Basestation, which was designed for the Nokia Siemens Network, has become the only product in the city to win Japan’s Good Design Award 2012 (G-mark), one of the top design awards in the world.

The product is the world’s first indoor base for mobile signal transmission and has already been put on the market, Li Weiling, leading designer of the project from the Shenzhen Rone Design Co. Ltd., told Shenzhen Daily on Friday.

It was the first time a Shenzhen-designed product has won the G-mark Award. The city recommended about 30 local design works to this year’s G-mark and 10 entered the second-round review. Li’s work was the only one to win the top award.

Li and his team first launched the project in March 2010, and finished it in May this year. “G-mark only accepts products that have already done well on the market, so we did not apply for the award until this year,” he said.

“It was a very challenging project as most of the work we did was related to digital products. We did a lot of research in the beginning, climbing many skyscrapers and talking to many residents,” he said.

“In the past, base stations were normally installed on the roof of a building. As it is the first of its kind in the world, we had to think about many factors such as pollution,” he said.

In Li’s opinion, besides technology, the most important thing to think about when designing the product was “harmony.” “It is a piece of equipment, so what we had to do was make it live harmoniously with the people inside a room, letting it merge into the surrounding environment and become unobtrusive,” he said.

A graduate of Chongqing Jiaotong University, the 29-year-old industrial designer came to Shenzhen in 2006 and won many international and domestic awards such as the Red Dot Award in 2008 and Chinese Outstanding Industrial Award in 2012.

As a young designer, Li thinks that most of the city’s industrial design works are too utilitarian, focusing too much on efficiency.

Because of the fast development of Shenzhen’s high-tech industry, most of the local industrial designs are related to digital products, but Li thinks Shenzhen designers can work more in designing products related to daily life, such as bowls and chopsticks.

He also suggested young designers in Shenzhen attend as many exhibitions and exchange activities as possible to open up their minds and improve their skills.

“Attending exhibitions is very important to help you understand what design is so that you will not be isolated from life and true design. Taiwan does a very good job of organizing these art and design events and I hope there will be more in Shenzhen in the future,” he said.

The G-mark Award is a comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system, operated by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion. It is one of the four top design awards in the world. The other three include Germany’s IF Award and Red Dot Award, and the United States’ IDEA. So far, more than 35,000 awards have been handed out worldwide.