My son’s watch stopped working recently. Since then, he has been absorbed in gathering information about new watches, so much so that he can hardly bring himself to study at home. As a son of an industrial designer, he is very particular about things he is interested in. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Having a list of required functions in place, he has been looking for watches that can appeal to his taste for design. But his efforts have been a struggle as he faces the reality that those with a complete set of functions fall short of meeting his design standard and that those with a good look and feel don’t come with enough functions. He can’t afford to have multiple watches to be used in different situations, nor is he provided with a generous budget, so he seems to be adamant about finding a product that hits the bullseye. Such troubling situations led him to say, “I don’t know why, but when I find a watch with good design and I want to buy it, it always comes with a high price tag.” I was surprised to hear that, because that’s exactly the reason why I determined to become a designer. What I had in mind when I first made up my mind to become a professional designer is: “More creative solutions can provide good-design products at lower prices, which in turn allows many people to live more stylish lives.”

It was not until I became a member of GK Design Group that I knew GK has embraced the “democratization of beauty” as its guiding principle. I may have sensed a kind of match between GK’s principle and my original spirit, which presumably has supported my career at GK up until today.

Now I’m aware that good products entail high costs as they require a decent standard of materials, manufacturing and finishing. I can also understand that quality gaps between different products should exist for strategic reasons.

That said, it is also true that designers’ qualities make a difference in products’ quality levels. Take as an example the compact car. There is a large gap between Japanese and European cars in terms of the quality of their interior design. As Satoshi Wada, former car designer at Audi, pointed out, designers’ sensibilities and consistencies should be a source for the differentiation in product qualities because every carmaker employs the same process for modeling. I have to say the directors’ judgments also play an important role, but I’ll talk about that next time.

In today’s world of design, especially in Japan, designers are shifting their focus from tangible to intangible things, and furthermore, they are moving toward putting more emphasis in big ideas behind the tangible products. In the meantime, however, Japan’s competitiveness in manufacturing has been in decline.

As the society transforms, humans also go through changes. While seeking a large-scale conceptual design, we need to focus on creating tangible objects that can strike a chord with real human beings. We have an obligation to pass down to future generations tangible objects that designers can devote themselves in creating to their heart’s content.

The conversation with my son gave me an opportunity to remember my original spirit as a designer.

Hiroshi Ohta

Product Design Dept.

Operating Officer