The Guangdong Industrial Design City Creative Design Week kicked off in the 
Guangdong Industrial Design City (GIDC) of Shunde, a district of the southern 
Chinese city of Foshan on Dec. 9, which marks China Design Day. Themed "Design, 
Empowering, Fusion", the event aimed to essentially highlight the 
professionalism, internationalism and sharing of design. Its focus on designs 
has facilitated the branding of a more advanced, international industrial 
design industry, thus empowering the quality development of "Designed by 
Shunde."

On its sidelines, a meeting on sharing design practices was held and invited 
leading designers from 10 countries, namely the UK, Germany, the US, Italy, 
Belgium, Sweden, Turkey, China, Japan and South Korea, to celebrate the 10th 
anniversary of GIDC's inception. Global designers, under the theme of 
"Uplifting Design, Wisdom-led Future", brought insights into the new 
opportunities and directions China's industrial design community would embrace 
amid economic globalization and cultural diversification. When it came to the 
Industry 4.0, the development trend of industrial design, and future 
opportunities for the design industry, they also exchanged views on introducing 
the upscale design thinking and know-how from across the world and encouraged 
designers to be more international and creative.

Xiong Hao, the head of Kurz Kurz Design China, a design agency headquartered in 
Germany, said he was hopeful that such events enabled people in the design 
industry to have a deeper understanding of the European industrial design 
history and learn from the best practices, so as to take the industrial design 
of Shunde to a new high.

GIDC represents the epitome of the development of Shunde's industrial design 
industry. Today, Design Shunde, an action plan to enhance the district's 
industrial design capabilities, has become a shining brand for the district. 
GIDC is growing in strength, so is the Design Shunde project, which, over the 
past year, has been a success. Statistics show that since the beginning of 
2019, 100 firms in industrial design have been registered in Shunde, bringing 
the total to 380. This has made Shunde the second largest cluster of industrial 
design companies in Guangdong, with the number of people engaging in this 
profession surpassing the 15,000 mark. About 10 new high-tech companies in 
design have been established, taking the total to some 50. Beyond that, the 
project has made breakthroughs in founding national research institutes, 
cooperating with global designers, and promoting the "Design Plus" mode, giving 
a boost to the transformation and upgrading of the traditional manufacturing 
industry.

GIDC is now home to more than 280 design agencies from across the globe, which 
bring together over 8,300 designers and developers. With that, nearly 85% of 
innovative designs can be commercialized and revenue generated from design 
services stands at about 4 billion yuan. All these figures have helped develop 
GIDC into China's center for industrial design and made possible the building 
of the Sanlong Bay High-end Innovation Cluster.

Source: The Guangdong Industrial Design City (GIDC)