Interview with Peter Zec

Prof. Dr. Peter Zec is media and art scientist and psychologist, who has been working in a design field for over 20 years. After he had finished studying he established a studio for holography. He had a crucial role in planning the establishment of the Centre for art and media technology in Karlsruhe. Convinced that what the society needs - innovations and new products, he discovered, and became familiar with, the world of design. His book Information design was well accepted among designers, who invited him to become the managing director of the German graphical and industrial design association. In 1991 he was offered to take over the management direction of internationally known design centre in Essen - Design Centrum Nordrhein Westfalen. Peter Zec, who lives in Essen and Berlin, has been for many years a consultant in communication and design for German and foreign companies. He held lectures, and is still lecturing, in over 30 countries all over the world. He has also received some important awards. As an expert in the field of design and communications he wrote six books and is publisher of two expert year books. In 1993 he accepted the professorship of Business Communication at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. In 2003 Zec became the president elect of ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design), the international umbrella organisation of design and is soon to take up an honorary post as President of ICSID.

The Red dot design award started as a design exhibition with selected items. The jury selected particular products they thought that could be a good example for the industry. It took place the first time in 1955 and has developed since then greatly. We established a new concept of exhibition with the name “Rotte punkt” as the German high design quality award in 1992. When we realised that the competition achieved a lot of international awareness and attraction, we changed it, in the year 2000, from German “Rotte punkt” to Red dot international. Since than, this award has got an incredible world wide visibility. There are 47 nations taking part in it and the meaning of this competition is still increasing. This is good for all the participants and especially for the winners. Nowadays it is one of the largest competitions and has become a kind of a model for other countries. Last year designers from Singapore came to us and they wanted to do a “Red dot Asia design award”. But we couldn’t agree about that, because Asian countries are not looking for awards in Asia, but for awards in Europe, in Western countries. But after all we decided to go with the Red dot concept in Asia. This was launched a couple months ago and the opening ceremony will be in November. This is a very good thing for Asia. Because in Europe, we try to keep our ideas, and in Asia they try to share them, they try to speak about them.

The main importance is a positioning of a company. With it companies measure their way in design by taking part and winning the award. They can see, if the way they walk, is the way that our judges think is the right one, the successful one. This is important, because design is not something that you can define precisely. Design is being redefined all the time. That is why we have to talk about it. As it is not measurable, we need this kind of competition to figure out, where do we stand (out). Sometimes companies which has received Red dot design award for six or seven years, had not changed enough and they did not get it any more. They possibly kept the quality of their products, but they did not innovate. This is a lesson they had to learn. It happened to very huge brands. Red dot is in this sense a good barometer for the companies and especially for the design departments to figure out whether their design strategy is on the right way or not.

Nowadays it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish products just by design. You can only see the differences in the details. Red dot helps the companies as well as the consumers to find better orientation. And in the future we will need much more of this kind of orientation than we do today. The awareness of this competition will probably rise from year to year. It is a kind of a tool to measure the development in design. We would also like to extend it to America. Because we are judging the real product, it is sometimes very difficult for the middle companies in USA, to ship over the products to Germany, where the competition takes place. That is why we thought to go to them and give them easier opportunity to give part in the competition.

Considering just the number we are the biggest in the world. Of course we try to achieve very high quality as well. We have very strict rules of who can become a judge. We invite for judges only independent designers or design professors or design journalists, which is very unique. Our viewpoint is that 80 % of them should be permanent, because this gives the competition a kind of continuity. Anyway, too much continuity is not good, so we change 20 % of them every year. In this way we get the interaction between new uses and continue use.
Some companies also take part with their products in more competitions and very often I see them awarded with other awards, but very seldom is the opposite, that we award something, that does not get an award somewhere else. In quality terms, we are one of the leading competitions in the world as well.

There are 24 judges for the product design section. We judge each product group with three judges. Designers are experts in different areas, because the range of products within Red dot competition is very large. We are selecting our judges and looking for their competences. There must be at least one judge in the group who is a real expert in that field. The most important fact is that designers must be freelance designers - they can not be employed in one of the companies, because it would not be fair to the competitors. The second point is, because this is an international competition, we need as lot as we can get international judges. The majority of our judges must be international. This year only five out of 24 judges were Germans.

We have a formula – we say we are qualified by selecting and presenting – we select products an present them on the stage. By doing so we are qualifying companies to the visitors in the Design centre museum. And they qualify themselves - they see their product on stage and say: “This is my product”. We probably give them a kind of a security, that they made the right choice. It is not a close-shop just for the designers, we want to be very open to other people in the companies too: to the marketing, the CEO-s and the managing directors as well. We want to look for more awareness in the companies about the strategic factor of design. It is not a question of a single product; it is a question of philosophy itself. We take care of the quality of what we do, of our work, because an award itself is a quality mark and is only good for the winners.

I think we have reached a level where design has become a master. I do not believe that there are companies without any design. All companies which are competitive in the markets have to do something in design. There is an optimised solution for a product in household appliances field, for example, that is impossible to reinvent it. From this point of view design, of course on a certain quality level, has become a master. You must fulfil this and than you have to find the way to talk about it. The competition goes from the visual form to the narrative forms. It is not enough just to have a good product, you need a story to tell about it – why is it there, what are your responsibilities as a company, why did you decided to do that and especially why should somebody buy it? All this answers you need to put in a story, which you have to wrap and explain it in a very nice way, so that people will trust you and believe you. Design awards can help you to do one little break in the wall of the story. It is a good argument for the story as you can say: “There is a group of experts that see it in the same way that we do”. Communication about design, without talking explicit about design, is a very important for the future success of the company.

Gorenje brand has an excellent design and the Gorenje Company does the design tasks perfectly. So its design sphere is perfect. But its job is to create a known and wanted brand out of it. This is today much more difficult than it was in the past, when there were so many possibilities to invent new things. Because Gorenje is an inventor in technological area it can also be an innovator in design. Today’s companies are forced to be good in design but at the same time they can not distinguish so much, because they all have reached what others have too. In this situation Gorenje have to work very hard in communication sector, to create the story of the brand and a better visibility about the company. Gorenje is a very competitive on the level of design.
 
So now it is just the question, why should somebody buy its products? To be as good as other brands or even better is not enough. Gorenje has to come with the brand to the point, where people who have to choose between two products, choose Gorenje’s product. This is just a question of belief, credibility of the company and the way the company communicates with audiences, clients, etc. But without design it is impossible to do even that. So Gorenje is forced to maintain the quality of design and communication.

The jury always looks for the details and for the approaches to do something different, new. They found out that the washing and drying machine with the same style have from the aesthetic and usability point of view some uniqueness and compared to others, Gorenje was really good. When watching washing machine in the first moment you think that they are all the same. But they are not. Our judges are experts and they see the differences. Sometimes you try to make something different but it is not better. In your case you made the difference in the better way. That is the reason.

The thing is that it has aesthetic proportions that are very well balanced. The whole appearance is very nicely balanced. It is a nice product, a nice object. It has a specific uniqueness of control and appearance. There are lots of machines in front of the jury and some of them shot, jump into the eye and make a step forward. The questions that the jury ask them selves are – is it also a good quality, is the finishing good and how good the design is? All together makes a better thing.

It has become a tricky business. You have to understand how to deal with the details. It is not any more possible to invent a really new thing. Of course, you should never stop looking for that, because through that you can get a unique position on the market, but the chances to achieve that, are very low. On the other hand, you must establish a very professional design management to maintain a certain quality of design. The risk is not being better in design, but in keeping the same level, not to become worse and this is not easy. The main point is that you need some patience to maintain the quality. Sometimes the management gets nervous: “We are doing for a long time nearly the same differences - only in the detail area, but we do not change the whole product any more”. Then they try to do fancy things and risk the reputation of the whole company. We never should do this. It depends on the management it self how patient they can be and how long they can wait. It is the same as in sport competitions. If you look the difference between the first and the second - sometimes you can not see it, because the difference between the winner and the last is less than a second. What does that mean? It means that they are all the same quality. It is the same situation in the markets. The point is that you always have to come into the finals. You have to maintain your quality and this is taught job. The success of today has no value in the future; this is a lesson the companies have to learn.