The best designers of the red dot design award 2007 in interview: Georg Trost and Tomohiro Takizawa

With its elegant design and expensive materials the Lifebook Q2010 notebook by Fujitsu Siemens Computers impressed the jury of the red dot award: product design 2007 and received for its excellent design quality a red dot: best of the best.  Its designers Georg Trost and Tomohiro Takizawa have achieved the perfect synthesis of shape, function and style. red dot online talked to the designers in an interview about the red dot, about their work as a designer and naturally about the Lifebook Q2010.

Mr Trost, Mr  Takizawa, what has inspired you to create this special product and what was the intention behind it?

Georg Trost: It was a particularly exciting task for our team to create a high-end notebook, whose significance and quality can also be experienced through its design.

Tomohiro Takizawa: I believe that the most important points of a mobile PC are its thinness and lightness, so to emphasize them to its maximum, I expressed the delicacy and lightness of a piece of paper on the body of this product. Moreover, nowadays,  a user brings his mobile PC with him everywhere all the time, and his PC is now one of the items for him to express his individuality, personality, and even identity just like clothes, accessories, watch and other items are. Therefore, I chose this specific expression so that this PC gives the feeling of luxury to everyone's eyes. 

What does being awarded the red dot: best of the best mean to you?

Georg Trost: I am happy about the award because I appreciate it as a compliment of the design community and a reward for the struggle to improve design quality.

Tomohiro Takizawa: I definitely did not focus on just only lightness and thinness of the product at all. I greatly considered about real value and meaning of products for customers, their working style, and even life style when designing the product, and actually Fujitsu's extremely high technology wonderfully let me create the product which not only had the best design but also filled my consideration.  I sincerely believe that my being awarded with the "red dot: best of the best" means that my pursuit for the true value and meaning of the product and innovation as a designer are admitted in public. I am quite glad and feel honored from the bottom of my heart.

What particular challenges do you think designers have to face these days?

Georg Trost: Today good design is nothing special anymore. Thus it is getting more and more difficult to distinguish and create the extraordinary. Development times and life cycles are getting shorter and shorter so that a designer has less and less time for the creative process. This requires high artistic confidence.

Tomohiro Takizawa: I guess that one of the challenges we are facing right now is how quickly and exactly we may catch our customers' deiversified and complicated demands for the rising functionality of products. So I think that by our doing bunch of research, analysis, and investigation aggressively, we, designers, may satisfy customers' current and even future demands.

As a designer, what would you still like to accomplish in the future?

Georg Trost: I would like to pass my experience of many years to the young designer generation to help them at the beginning of their career.

Tomohiro Takizawa: I would like to create truly valuable, meaningful, and attractive products, just like users would be in a trouble without my products in life, not like something users think just convenient.

What do you think is the economic significance of design?

Georg Trost: We are convinced that every shopping decision is inspired by instinct. This means the longing for a product is essentially influenced by design. This may result in products gaining cult status. There are many examples of it.

Tomohiro Takizawa: In my opinion, I actually cannot deny that most of products have limited pursuit of function and price at certain level. However, design itself is surely unlimited resourse to us and it will possibly make a product more valuable unlimitedly. For this reason, I believe that the economic significance of design will get higher in the future. 

In accordance with the current design code of the computer industry, the Lifebook Q2010 presents a cool, highly attractive image and captivates with its particularly slim shape and glossy black surface.  The magnesium casing is finished with several layers of hardwearing black piano varnish.  The display frame and the touchpad of the notebook are the colour of stainless steel and titanium has been used in the hinging, which ensures high stability.

Weighing just one kilo and the size of an A4 page, the Lifebook Q2010 is, according to its manufacturer, the lightest weight notebook in its class and in spite of the small depth of just 18 millimetres it is extremely hardwearing thanks to the high quality materials it is made of.  The design offers both mobility and elegance in equal measure.  With the Lifebook Q2010 designers Georg Trost and Tomohiro Takizawa have succeeded in producing a perfect combination of the latest technology and priceless, elegant design, which in the opinion of the jury sets a benchmark for the industry.

In view of the lightning speed of technological progress in the computer industry and the saturation of the market, it is the task of good design to create individuality with innovative models.  Fujitsu Siemens Computers have risen to this challenge with their Lifebook Q2010 and have been awarded the red dot: best of the best for their extraordinary design work in the computer, media and entertainment technology category.