‘QUAD’ Pen

By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

Nam Jeong-gyun picks up a glossy black pen and writes in the air as if writing on an invisible whiteboard. The pen has an electronic sensor at the tip, he says, so it can record every movement into a tiny memory chip located inside the streamlined body.

``Let's say that an important idea suddenly hits you, but there is nothing to write on, and you know that you'll lose the idea if you don't record it right away. This pen, allows you to write on any surface, storing everything you write,'' he told spectators at the graduation exhibition of Samsung Art & Design Institute (SADI) held two weeks ago in Seoul.

f210 ‘Swing’ Music Phone

The futuristic pen named QUAD was one of 32 design works displayed by the graduating students of the Product Design department of SADI. Samsung Group founded the school in 1995 as an academy of future fashion and graphic designers. The PD department was established in 2005 as the need for designers with an engineer's mindset grew at Samsung Electronics and other manufacturing arms of the nations' largest conglomerate.

Although, the brainy pen created by Nam was just a mock-up, and Nam hopes to one day sell the idea to luxury brands such as Montblanc, given that similar technologies are already in use in some consumer electronics such as the popular Wii video game console made by Japan's Nintendo.

Though the displayed products were still in their conceptual stages, the exhibition, which also featured a dual-screen laptop and a digital camera that doubles as a photo frame, showed that Samsung's technology-oriented corporate philosophy is bringing up a unique identity in product design as well.

Until a few years ago, the company made significant investment in hiring more designers and building laboratories for them. But the end products often resulted in reluctant compromises between its stubborn engineers and frustrated designers. Usually, executives with engineering backgrounds had the priority in deciding what to make and how it would be sold. They would spend big money on the promotion of the quirky products such as a 10-million pixel camera phone and a 100-inch plasma TV, which not many would dare to buy.

Designers groaned in agony when engineers made design modifications without consulting them. ``Such dilemmas do not happen in Nokia,'' Chung Kook-hyun, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics and chief of its Design Center, had said in a meeting with reporters back in 2005, adding Samsung is yet to compete with global design powers.



Things have changed greatly since then, and evidence now shows that Samsung has mastered the merging of technology and beauty. The wind of change was first sensed early last year, when the firm launched the ``Bordeaux'' TV lineup. It was given this name because the base of the frame resembled that of a wine glass, while the liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen boasted the highest picture quality of the time. The general design concept was left intact by engineers, as the two groups worked together as a task force for months on end. As a result, the Bordeaux was well received by consumers, and its brisk sales made Samsung the world's largest flat-panel TV seller of the year.



Similar successes followed the footsteps of the Bordeaux series, and the firm began to sweep up design awards in major global competitions such as the Red Dot Award and the IF Award. ``Lay,'' a laser printer, has become a bestseller in South Korea for its sturdy yet fancy design. ``Ultra'' series mobile phones were registered on the Guinness Book as the world's slimmest mobile phone, while still being equipped with a number of high-end multimedia features such as three million pixel camera and a digital music player.

Earlier this month, the firm announced that 27 of its products were selected as ``Good Design'' by the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization. Additionally, a side-by-side refrigerator designed by British artist Jasper Morrison was named as one of the ``Best 15 items of the year'' _ the second consecutive year after a memory camcorder earned the same honor in 2006.
``To be named in the Best 15 again for two straight years is evidence that Samsung's design capability has settled in the global ultra-first class,'' Chung said in a release.

Learning from outside design gurus helped. ``Collaboration with star designers including Jasper Morrison is bolstering Samsung's design competence, too.'' Chung said. Since 2005, the firm has formed partnerships with several top foreign brands such as Giorgio Armani and Bang & Olufsen. The latter firm especially shares the same philosophy as Samsung in valuing designs motivated by advanced technologies, said Choi Gee-sung, Samsung's chief of telecommunication.

``Since we first started our cooperation with Bang & Olufsen, we have only confirmed our belief that both companies share a passion for innovation and consumer-focused technology,'' he said, presenting a music phone named Serenata.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr