The Business of Design Week is an annual week long design event organised every December by the Hong Kong Design Centre. I was so thrilled to be able to join this amazing talk show event to listen in the masters of design in business.

Here are the list of speakers that sparked my design soul:

1. Carlos Velazquez, Corporate Marketing Director of Roca Group
2. Chris Fjelddahl, CEO of Eight Partnership
3. Ferran Figerola, CEO of Cricursa
4. Thomas Heatherwick, Founder of Heatherwick Studio

Carlos Velazquez, Corporate Marketing Director of Roca Group

As I walked into the talk event, I was surprised somebody would be giving a talk about toilets. At first I didn't think this topic would be interesting at all, but when I saw just how much design thinking and process has gone into the products and services he and the company provided. Carlos Velazquez has ultimately earned my praise.

The Roca Group specializes in designing bathrooms for companies, businesses and houses around the world. Velazquez placed great emphasis that design was important. That it had to be maxed from the bottom up. When we design products, we have to design with communication, it has to be hollistically thought and planned out. And that you have to look into future trends, try to digest and round it, and apply to the real market place. Velazquez pointed out that the market place is a battle ground and understanding the users where they come from also posed an important factor. After which Velazquez claims that the whole entire process was complicated.

Their brand strategy is to be global but local at the same time. As the design has to be relevant and cater to different people from different regions around the world.

Velazquez stated there were 5 stages of their toilet design:

First Stage: Functionality

In the 1930s, design was used for function. That it can basically perform the most basic of tasks for mankind. Such as a toilet to flush your waste, a shower to wash your body, and a sink to wash your hands.

Second Stage: Aesthetics

Design was then not only about how it works, but how it looks. You had to think about what is the story you want to tell people when they first enter the bathroom.

The hotels that Velazquez worked with were on the high end luxury class, so designing a bathroom that communicates that rich experience is one example.

Third Stage: Performance

Design was a commodity and you had to give something else to the products. In Bathroom 3.0, the products has to perform.

So instead of a basic toilet that flushes your waste, a great performance toilet would have to be smart. Where it incoporates all the features that it could handle. Such as a warm seat heater, powerful precisive silent flush, a nozzle to wash your butt hole and etc.

Or a shower that uses different modes to offer different showering experiences. Blast mode, waterfall mode, sprinkling mode and etc.

Fourth Stage: Integration

In Bathroom 4.0, people are now moving into the cities and houses are becoming smaller and smaller. So how can you make sure the bathroom fits into the space while still providing breathing room?

That's where integration comes in. Velazquez points out that the products can become one with the space. Meaning that the toilet is attached to the wall, the shower head is inside the ceiling, and the sink is a part of the toilet.

Fifth Stage: Service

Then he questions the audience "so what is Bathroom 5.0? The Bathroom of the Future".

Well it's going to be tailor made. It's not just about the products, it has to give you service. Design has to be in the products. You have to understand how it's communicated with different messages to different users. They're not all the same message.

You have to apply the design strategy for different target groups and apply the design into the communication. If there is no consistency in the design, then everything will fall apart. That’s why everything has the same look and feel, so that everything looks like it’s one whole package.

To end the talk, he showed a picture of a Rubik's cube saying it's a beautiful product. With good performance and good aesthetics. When all the colours are mixed up, you have to manage the design to fight with competitors, and continuously evolve.

In the Q&A, someone asked "what is your favourite toilet?"

Velazquez replied "The same toilet I duplicated from a project for a client and had it installed into my very own house. My favourite toilet would be the one after my 2 year old daughter used it. That's my favourite toilet"

Chris Fjelddahl, CEO of Eight Partnership

Unexpectedly, the next speaker is from Eight Partnership. I have been to the office a couple of times because they were hosting networking events there but I have never thought that I would get to see the CEO present about his company and his works on the big stage.

Eight Partnership is a branding design agency and has worked with world reknown famous brands and is headquartered in Hong Kong.

Chris Fjelddahl began the talk with human experiences, the role that design has.

Fjelddahl states that branding is not all about the logo. It's about the story. The brand is the experience. What is the dream? What is the experience from beginning to end? What is the end product?

Repeatingly mentioning that branding is not just about the logo and identity meant a lot of people got it wrong. He states that it is far more than that.

The brand space is how the user experiences when they first walk into the room, how it visually communicates, how it smells like, and how it feels like. Meaning it has to touch on all our different sensory systems of our body.

It’s not just telling people what is the product, but to influence them. Get them to fall in love with the product. Get them to tell stories to other people that will drive your brand.

When Fjelddahl was about to present Cathay Pacific, I couldn't wait what he was about to reveal. After showing so little on their website and at the office, he presented the 2 years of hardwork with the company. And still going.

As Cathay Pacific already has a logo, they came to Eight Partnship to rebrand their entire company. To improve their current logo, Eight decided to simplify the logo mark's tail brush stroke. Removing the dirt details. Then they made C and P to match the cap height with the rest of the letters. Whilst at the same time, refine the kerning between the letters.

https://vimeo.com/144258242

He showed a video of their company working with Cathay Pacific, and of a plane with their new design flying through the open sky.

Fjelddahl claimed there was no way to shoot the plane at that angle with a camera, and was impossible to do because the aircraft carrier was not even made yet. And so they got in contact with a studio in California who happens to be the same people that created the visual effects for the Ironman movies. How expensively cool is that?

So in all the billboard ads of the Cathay Pacific aircraft carrier we see here in Hong Kong, they were all highly computer 3D renderings. I have to say, it looks friggin real.

Fjelddahl talked about a brand design he had done for a lounge in Japan. The lounges are prime spaces where the brand is the experience. A lot of time spent thinking about the warmth and the emotive impact of the material. So now Eight began to understand that different materials can evoke different emotive impacts to the brands they create.

One of the things that Eight does in doing brand experiences is creating very important tools to start with. A book with a brand design guideline. The designers loved it. And when they get it into their hands, they’re like finally we got the brief to work with. And Eight pretty much does it with all the brands that they had worked with. What the clients then do is evoke that promise that the brand has in the market in which case Cathay Pacific was to create that kind of experience.

Then we arrive at the Q&A.

Q: If you were to rebrand Microsoft, how would you do it against Apple?
A: It's an interesting opportunity, you don't rebrand to make something that it can be. The thing about branding is who your target audience is. And you try to find the stuff you are really good at, not just to what you strongly believe in but the culture that you operate in. And that’s your starting point. You cannot go outside of that, you cannot be different from outside of the table.

Q: What does 8 mean in your brand name?
A: It was a quick thought drinking with a glass pouring. The idea came from the 12 animal zodiac with the year of the goat. So there you go, 8. We're not 8 partners by the way.
Guy Parsonage: I have a business with 3 partners and that's already enough.

Ferran Figerola, CEO of Cricursa

The man who makes glass for a living, and combines it with Architecture. Ferran Figerola comes to the stage.

My first impression is that glass sounds like a boring mundane material to work with. And how can anyone make a business out of it?

Apparently Figerola knew how. And I got the feeling I shouldn't be too quick to make hasty judgements like before. He begins the talk by asking us "How can we talk about glass if it's invisible? and how can we talk about innovation since it was made in 1978?".

Cricursa is a industrial company that makes glass all around the world. In the past they talk a lot about research and development. But today, they talk about innovation and design.

Because they are a big company, they can now afford to buy research. Which acts as a scientific area to get new ideas.

Cricursa found two inventors. One found a way to glue marble with glass, and another found a way to laminate glass and marble together. They began to work together on the building projects, and was able to create natural light to go through the walls. The material was transluscent marble.

Figerola claims that Design is much more than aesthetic concept. But the process before the act of doing. It has a lot to do with thinking, and can affect the company as a whole for every section and action.

If you’re innovating, you have to design. Even if you copy (which a lot of companies do), you still need to design it yourself.

Figerola mentioned an architect that he worked with that had already created a building. When he asked the architect his thoughts on his creation, the architect responded negatively "I hate my building because it's not the building I see". Meaning his building glass exterior was so reflective that other people's buildings were being revealed instead. And funnily enough, Cricursa already had the solution.

Figerola states that there is no machines in the world that can produce the glass Cricursa was looking for. And so they had to design their own set of tools, and their own design process. Such as curving ovens, glass ovens, moulds and etc.

There are times where the client had created a 3D rendering of their building, and would ask Cricursa if they could achieve it. And Figerola would reply "we could try and see". Always trying to push the boundaries of their skills.

Figerola claims Cricursa had invented lots of different types of glass, and said they always have to test the product to see if it works.

He showed a series of images of different types of glass that he produced. From glass that looks like water, digital images in glass, copper in glass, metal mesh in glass, and were the first ones to create colour glass.

Then concluded the talk by saying that we should always design and think before doing anything. Only til then would you have a good feeling and good thought about the products you produced.

Q&A
Q: Where do you see the future of glass?
A: The future where glass can change the colour, block the sun whenever you want and etc. Well it already existed 10 years ago but it's very expensive to make. So if there was a way to make the technology cheaper and easier. That would be the dream.

Q: What is your dream project?
A: I have no idea. We have to talk to the architects so they can enable us to achieve whatever they need us to do.

Thomas Heatherwick, CEO of Heatherwick Studio

Last of all is Thomas Heatherwick. An architect from England that creates innovative buildings placing originality at its core.

Heatherwick talked about how he began his career. He first started it out at the Manchester of Polytechnic of England where design was everything. He was surrounded by people who experimented with many different materials. From the ceramics department, wood department, glass blowing, plastic bending, metal working, to silver smithing. This got Heatherwick interested.

And apparently the first thing Heatherwick was interested was the sense of scale, by building the smallest building of all buidlings. Heatherwick stated that the best architects would always build massive cityscapes and will always remain archiphenia. Whilst the newborn would never be given the chance.

So Heatherwick started to wonder whether it was possible to create a small building. His teacher told Heatherwick to just make a model, but Thomas felt like he won't learn so much if he just made a model.

And so later on, he ended up working in the sponsorship department where a new engineer came on board for recently winning the young engineer of Britain award. Heatherwick would find himself working every weekend with him until one day created a model out of a twisted clay.

The idea was to take a normal gable roof and twisting it, where the facets of the roof became the wall and it seems like a simple idea. But Heatherwick started to wonder if it was possible to make. So he went ahead and planned it all out.

While Heatherwick was creating the building, somehow people started getting interested in the project. And they would spread the word to get their friends to help out as well.

Heatherwick risked his final year on his degree course. While all his teachers said no to him, Heatherwick still went ahead anyways. And the moment they saw that he was serious, they actually supported him.