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"Designed by Hong Kong" Sets Lead-in for Business of Design Week (BODW) 2014

Over a hundred of design enthusiasts attended a sharing session on “Functional Simplicity” held by Hong Kong Design Centre at Eslite Bookstore on 10^th July. The event is one of the “Designed by Hong Kong” sharing session series, as the overture for Business of Design Week (BODW) 2014. Japanese industrial design heavyweight Mr. Naoto Fukasawa and the design team of local brand Outofstock were invited to the first sharing session engaging in the dialogue discussion on “Functional Simplicity” to seek for the answer of ultimate Living Design with the balance between function and simplicity. The sharing session has received enthusiastic response from audiences who seized the opportunity to have face to face contact with the designers as well as showed support to Hong Kong design and innovative development.

BODW 2014, Asia’s leading annual event on design, innovation and brands, will be held from 1–6 December at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Sweden, the partner country of this year’s BODW, will showcase its design and creativity on how it is applied on “wear it”, “live it”, “work it” and “do it” under the theme of Living Design. “Designed by Hong Kong” is a series of sharing sessions as well as the lead-in activity of BODW 2014. The dialogue sessions provide an idea exchange platform for promising local designers and some of the world’s most outstanding designers to explore various topics in design. Fukasawa was one of the forum speakers of BODW 2010. In the dialogue session, he expressed that a design emphasizes simplicity and functionality is easier to blend into user’s daily life. “The appearance of the design is definitely important, but user experience is even more precious to me. ‘Functional simplicity’ has long been my design direction, to make life better with the simplest and most convenient designs”. A long-serving design consultant of Muji, Fukasawa's minimalist design is a household name with the "wall-mounted CD player" as one of the most renowned works. In addition, he has also involved in product design for several international brands such as Apple, Epson, Hitachi, NEC, Sharp, Toshiba, Issey Miyake, etc.

Founded in 2007, Outofstock is a local furniture design company aiming to introduce high-quality furniture and unique lifestyle into modern homes. One of the Outofstock’s founders, Mr. Pan Tang started his design career after graduated from the Department of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. Initially, Tang and his team just "recycle used furniture" or manufactured brand new furniture in vintage style, which was later explored to the development of nostalgic and Nordic style furniture and interior design. Mr. Pan Tang stated they adopted the raw wood tone minimalist design that will never be tired of watching and discarded the use of nostalgic style in their new series of furniture. Every piece of the furniture is in possession of attentive and detailed design which greatly enhanced its practicality. Apart from its retail store in Fo Tan, Outofstock also extends its footprint to PMQ, the new landmark of creativity in Central.

Support Local Design – “Designed by Hong Kong” x Promising Local Designers

From this July through November, HKDC “Designed by Hong Kong” monthly sharing session series invites promising local designers or brand masterminds to speak on different design topics about communication, fashion, multi-media, product, etc. This event aims at providing an idea exchange platform for the public and local designers/brands, allowing designers and brands to share their design process and success stories, use of design for creating business value and community benefits and how to make Hong Kong a key player among International marketplace through design and innovation.

“Designed By HK” Sharing Session Series (TBC)

Date	Venue	Theme
10^th July (Thursday)	Eslite Bookstore	Functional Simplicity
2^nd August (Saturday)	TBC	Design for New Nomad
20^th September (Saturday)	TBC	Design for Upcycling Culture
18^th October (Saturday)	TBC	Playful Images X Fashion Design
29^th November (Saturday)	TBC	Design for Immersive Xperience