CHINA DESIGN TRENDS REPORT 2020-2021

To fit into the faster and faster pace of urban life, and people's continually changing lifestyle, nowadays, an outstanding design must be functional and practical. It needs to fit into people's future lifestyle and their aesthetic demands as well. "How does a trend start? What kind of product design will fit into the future market?"-these are the topics for which the global design industry always cares.
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The 'China Design Trends Report' is an annual routine research project of YANG DESIGN, which tried to help different industries could have the power to cater to the emotional demands of various Chinese consumers and to attract more potential consumers towards the market success. It based on a deep and thorough exploration of the local market, including researches on the social formation, consumption trends, and design expert interviews. With these researches and studies, we have prepared Chinese lifestyle forecasting and four different design macro trends. In each macro trend, we have provided corresponding CMF (color, material, and finish) proposals, which will be suitable for various design fields in China.

To begin the trend forecasting, on the one hand, we would collect significant cases and data in recent one year across six categories, including Policy, Economy, Society, Technology, Culture, and Design, to help us review the changes and impacts on peoples' life and opinions.  On the other hand, it's also important to listen to the voices from relevant experts, which could help us to get inspiration on the insight of future design trends. With these researches and studies, we will deduct four different design macro trends.
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To help the readers to understand the four macro trends clearly, we depict corresponding scenarios, analyze and categorize collected design elements to interpret those macro trends. Then we extract and forecast CMF ( color, material, and finish) trends beneath those macro trends. Finally, we also create corresponding personas to help the readers construct a coherent image on who are the target consumers of the design applied such CMF trends.

1. According to the desk research, we found that the Chang'e-4 probe landed on the far side of the moon, the release of the Sci-Fi film Wandering Earth, and the ethical argument towards CRISPR, all these significant events in 2019 lighted up a national hardcore sci-fi blockbuster for younger generations.
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2. During the expert interviews, three of them showed strong anticipation about the combinations of technology futurism and humanism, like biotechnology materials and multi-sensory interaction experience, which means exploring and challenging the unknown future with cutting-edge technology to create intenser tangible connections between people.

3. Science futurism becomes a more and more common subject applied in product launch activities, such as NIO X Hussein Chalayan, and Mi.

4. Mirror high gloss surface, exposed cool rivet, and armor elements are emerging elements to conceptual car design and fashion show.

One of the four proposed macro trends is Hardcore Planet, which is driven by the hardcore science-fiction blockbuster. Its keywords are nationalist science fiction, hardcore, and living tech.

Its corresponding scenario depicts that in a preview of Chinese hardcore sci-fi movie, the gleaming green and bluish-purple seemed like calling on people to summon up their courage to explore the living tech on those unknown planets. Getting rid of the gravity with silver space armor and performance visualized hardcore devices and going through different galaxies, they will arrive at the destination of the long journey to embrace the light of new digital living tech. The description of the scenario also indicate our forecasting to the future CMF elements of this trend, such as mirror silver, night black, and Microorganism Green.

The Hardcore Planet is one of the four macro trends of the trends report towards 2020-2021, which is the 7th report since published in 2013. And it was well-received from clients from consumer electronics, transportation, home, personal care, food, fashion accessory, retail and B2B sectors. I also had the opportunity to participate in some subsequent trends research projects for VIVO, Lenovo, Mitsubishi, and so on.