Colombo Design Studio represents SL at prestigious CII NID Design Summit

Friday, 21 December 2012 00:37 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Colombo Design Studio founder Lee Bazalgette was in India last week to speak at the 12th annual Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Institute of Design’s (NID) Design Summit that took place in New Delhi. Endorsed by the India Design Council with close to 500 attendees, the conference spanned two days and was aimed at designers and business leaders alike to help discuss and promote the value and position of design in India.

The overarching theme of this year’s conference was ‘Design Thinking, Design Doing’. The conference brought together 21 speakers from around the world, including product designers, industry CEOs and directors, design thinkers and strategists who presented on a wide range of subjects from basic design process to how to get design thinking and doing into the boardroom.

Among the distinguished speakers were Paul Priestman, Co-Founder of Priestman Goode, Anil Saini, Director of General Motors Design Studio India and Vivek Sirohi, Vice President R&D for Unilever, South Asia.

The subject of Lee’s talk was ‘How does the digital social-sphere affect product design’, which was an investigation into how ‘big data’ in the form of social updates can be used to develop new and interesting products that explore and manifest our social interactions.

The broader topic of the presentation was ‘The Internet Of Things’; the rapidly increasing number of connected devices that are beginning to appear on the market, along with the vast amount of readily available data, ranging from government information to social sentiment. A copy of his presentation can be downloaded from www.colombodesignstudio.com.

Prior to the conference, Lee was asked to take part in the judging of the CII Design Excellence Awards along with a panel of distinguished designers from around the world, including the UK, Finland, USA and India.

Designs had been submitted from many sectors, including household goods and appliances, transport and automotive, branding and communication and interaction design. Each was assessed according to the level of innovation, the aesthetic form, the quality and also the effectiveness in the market. In total there were 20 awards divided into 16 sub-categories and four overall category winners.

This was the first time that a Sri Lankan product design consultancy was represented at the conference and as a result there was great deal of interest generated in the design market in Sri Lanka, particularly with reference to product design and development, innovation, R&D and manufacturing.

“It’s interesting to see the growing support and awareness of design within India, from design education to policy making at government and ministerial levels. While industries such as fashion design, architecture and interior design are well established in Sri Lanka, it would be great to see increasing support for product design and innovation to help build this new and growing sector of the Sri Lankan economy.”