Introduction: His design of YOGA flip-over laptops has become an model for other global brands. As Lenovo’s senior design director, he made the consumer PC business a turnover of US $ 15 billion; and his design team has won 165 international design awards worldwide in the past decade, including the 2013 German Red Dot Design Team, in which only one team can be selected every year worldwide. Today, he founded the L + brand and is setting off a new revolution in household utensils.

    On November 23rd, Li Fenglang, the chief designer of L + brand and master’s tutor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, brought a wonderful speech entitled “Borderless design for future” at the 2019 Industrial Design and Brand Symposium.

    Li Fenglang was the head designer of 2008 Beijing Olympic Torch. He designed the Xiangyun (clouds of auspicious sign) torch based on Chinese cultural characteristics and passed the Chinese symbols to the five continents all over the world. Since then, he has been thinking about how to maintain the quality of the torch for a long time?

    10 years later, in his speech in Chengdu, he first revealed three points of the imperfection in the 2008 Olympic torch design.

   Guo Jiecheng, the Secretary-General of the Taiwan Design Alliance, commented that it was admirable of a well-known person to admit the design regrets, and required great courage and wisdom.

    Mr. Li Fenglang constantly reflects on his own design works, calling on creativity of products, but also “fully be done”. Combining his many years of practice and experience in the industry, he proposed that design should jump out of the boundaries of cultural heritage, industry and engineering, society and users, and extend to the direction of brand and influence, channel collaboration and value-added, user participation and historical contribution.

Global Village Perspective: Intellectual Property Protection and Sharing

    The popularity of YOGA and its widespread follow-up caused a contradiction between joy and worry. Mr. Li Fenglang felt: The existence of intellectual property rights is to “encourage people to make progress through sharing.” Intellectual property rights encourage people to share and contribute their “thoughts” by “protecting” knowledge. As others make further development and form new ideas based on these ideas, new intellectual property rights come into play.

“Physiological Psychology and Sociability” is the Essence of People

    “Civilization is continuous.” From the perspective of scholars, looking at the human history of nearly 200 years, Mr. Li Fenglang believes that design is more for the needs of democracy and social development. While tracing back to 5000 years ago, physiological, psychology and sociability is the essence of people. Only in this way can we jump out the boundaries of design.

    The ancient Chinese Ge, Jue and Ding in the museums are all in a three-legged design. By consulting historians, Mr. Li Fenglang learned that the design of the ancients was only to make the contact area between fire and vessels larger. Compared with the aesthetic elements, these vessels are almost made from the perspective of function, and adapt to the etiquette system of different dynasties with the development of the age. The same is true of the eight major kitchen utensils in ancient China.

    Mr. Li Fenglang reexamined the modern home kitchen utensils and found that there are many unreasonable places. For example, the position where the handle of the pot and the edge of the pot are connected, after a period of use, a lot of grease cannot be cleaned. Therefore, he designed a “seamless pot” and “integral pot lid”, and successfully solved the problem of heat transfer from pot to the handle. You can imagine how kitchen utensils will change--this is good news for people who loves cooking all over the world!

    Professor Liu Guanzhong, the father of China’s industrial design, highly praised Li Fenglang:

“As a personal brand designer, it is admirable to tirelessly explore the spirit of Chinese design and manufacturing.”

    Mr. Li Fenglang proposed the “closed-loop design boundary”, that is, the creativity comes from the perspective of civilization, industry, and users, and ultimately it is to realize commercial value, industrial value, and social value. To think about the future, all Chinese designers should refer to the design principles, that is, the continuation of the 5,000-year-old civilization of China, the simple and memorable symbols that resonate the world. “From a small perspective, we are exploring Chinese design and manufacturing. From a larger perspective, as a 5,000-year-old oriental world, we should have our own contribution in the industry of industrial design in the future, thus making the world more perfect. ”

    Just two days before the Industrial Design and Brand Symposium, the L + brand officially signed a contract with Newcomer Group, China’s largest luggage company.