Technology helps Chinese designers make good progress

Shangguan Zhe's 2013 autmn/winter collection

2nd Sohu Fashion Achievement Awards

It's no wonder the international jury of the China Red Star design award has awarded the gold prize to Xiaomi Inc, a smartphone maker that invites its users to take part in the design process.

Massimo Mini, co-founder of designboom.com, an Italian website covering fields of industrial design, architecture and art, agrees that in the future, interface and service designs will be very important. But they need designers' vision and passion to drive the innovation.

The Italian website recently cooperated with the design award to help promote Chinese designs worldwide.

"China has a huge market, that's a very important reason why we are here this year," Mini says.

"I believe in 10 years, there will be a Chinese company producing the dream phone."

In the past decade, Chinese design has attracted increasing attention on the international stage, with more Chinese designers winning influential honors like the Red Dot award and iF product design award.

"It's wrong to say that China has no design. We neglected the importance of design. But we have woken up, moving from 'made in China' to 'designed by China'," says Zhu Tao, president of China Industrial Design Association.

The Great Wall and the Forbidden City are good examples of Chinese design in ancient times. But Chinese companies' obsession with producing large quantity of products made them blind to product design, Zhu adds.