Design in the company’s history
Five years after the end of the Korean war, LG Electronics was founded under its original name, ‘Gold Star’ by a couple of young Korean men who had the prescience to realise that the future of the domestic economy would lie in the electronics industry. They then devoted all their energy to realising this vision. Right from the start they broke new ground in Korea by hiring an industrial designer who was responsible for the external design of the first products. The company enjoyed its first success one year later when it launched the first transistor radio for the Korean market. One year later, Gold Star set up a whole department just for product design

Almost 25 years to the day after recruiting its first industrial designer, Gold Star inaugurated the ‘Gold Star Design Center’ in 1983, an admission to the growing importance of design in the production of increasingly complex devices.

In June 1999 the CEO of LG Electronics at the time, John Koo, set a new strategy for the new millennium: marketing, technology, design and cooperation now became the four core competences of the enterprise. With this strategy the company has set itself an ambitious goal: it wants to be among the top three international electronics, information and telecommunications companies worldwide before the end of 2010. In pursuit of this goal, LG is focusing on innovation and design – the only possible approach if the company is to establish itself for the long term. Hee-Gook Lee, Chief Technical Officer of LG and President of the LG Corporate Design Center puts it this way: “The designers of LG Electronics have increased the value of LG products through the magic of ‘design’ to create aesthetic and easy-to-use products. As a pioneer of the new lifestyle, LG encourages fun-to-use products. There is a great emphasis on a premium design strategy which not only increases product competitive power but also elevates the brand value of LG Electronics. By 2007, the designers of LG Electronics will have cultivated its design competence to the level where it sets the global standard.”

The LG Corporate Design Center
The Corporate Design Center is located in a high-rise office block situated in the thriving business center of Seoul. Each of the four design departments that make up the Design Center has an entire floor to itself. In Seoul alone, several hundred designers are working on fulfilling the global top-design strategy. In addition, designers at the five international offices of the Corporate Design Center located in China, Italy, India, Japan and America are working on designing products tailored to the local markets – in total approximately 400 designers from 12 nations all in the service of LG.

The Corporate Design Center is structured in line with the different manufacturing divisions for which it designs the products: the Digital Display & Media Design Lab (DDM), which is responsible among other things for plasma televisions, monitors, DVD players, audio systems, home theater entertainment and PCs; the Digital Appliance Design Lab (DA), which designs household appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners or washing machines; and the Mobile Communication Design Lab (MC). The Design Center is rounded off by the Life Soft Research department which is responsible for generating, on the basis of consumer trends and market research, visionary concepts such as a mobile life or the intelligent house, for example.

Interplay of design and research in the technological age
All the work of the design team is oriented towards its vision of becoming a ‘Digital Life Creator’. From a practical perspective, technology is becoming more complex day by day. Ever more products incorporate chips that endow them with intelligence and networking functionality and, even though these developments are still in their infancy, this area offers huge potential for design approaches.

In this situation, design not only has the critical role of harmonising technology with human needs but designers must now also become inventors. They must predict new needs, design new worlds and lifestyle concepts, and offer these to the public. This attitude explains the close cooperation between the Corporate Design Center and the research department of the company, reflected in the fact that both of these functions report to the Chief Technical Officer, Dr. Hee-Gook Lee.

These are precisely the issues explored by Life Soft Research Lab, which came into being approximately 20 years ago. As such, it plays a crucial role within the Corporate Design Center, even if it remains virtually hidden from the scrutiny of the outside world. The researchers, designers, and trend scouts employed at the lab look into the future, examine and identify consumer needs, observe how the public handles existing products, design solutions and finally develop design concepts for the three design labs. This means they are always one step ahead of their time and are already working on future product generations. The often protracted research work does not focus on products or technological possibilities as such. Rather, it attempts to understand the customer and the market.

The move into the premium segment
For some time now, LG has also pursued a premium market strategy in order to participate on the lucrative market for high-end household appliances, mobile telephones and other multimedia products. This brings with it the opportunity of positioning the company as an innovative technology firm with a flair for design and thus building on its market position – with a constant eye towards becoming one of the top three on the market by 2010. At the same time, this strategy is a huge challenge. Whereas success on the mass market means offering decent products at low prices, in the premium segment the need is to offer special value-added by creating particularly product quality and offering particular technical features through excellent design. Correspondingly, the global premium market strategy is supported by the global top design approach and a high degree of innovation. For this reason, LG now has research and development laboratories at more than 25 locations around the world. R&D investments have been increased continuously and amounted to US$ 3.1 billion last year. Strategic alliances with other market and technological leaders complement the global growth strategy. This tactic appears to be working and the right strategy has obviously been selected. The company is very successful in its efforts to establish itself in an increasingly difficult design market. Its products are becoming known for their originality and independence as well as the coherence within individual product lines.

The „Hall of Fame“
red dot: design teams of the year