Case study

Until ReD began working with Samsung in 2006, the market-leading company’s design philosophy borrowed heavily from Japan. Sharp lines, cool edge lighting, and a slick aesthetic celebrated modernity–a glorification of technology in the home.

This changed dramatically when Samsung hired ReD to help incorporate Scandinavian design for use in a new line of audio-visual products. ReD took Sam­sung’s designers on a field trip through Scandinavia and Holland to help them discover the milder, soft­er aesthetics of Northern Europe.

The Scandinavia trip inspired the Samsung team to take a similar trip within Korea, which helped them develop their own distinct visual design philosophy–one that gave up the aesthetics of technology to instead reflect the aesthet­ics of the home. (At the time, Samsung revamped its popular Bordeaux TV line to take on more generous curves and softer lights.) More importantly, the pro­cess of first looking outward and then looking inward, allowed them build the confidence to take more pro­vocative design steps, such as launching the “Touch of Color” initiative, which blended a hint of amber into the frame of their 2008 line-up of LCD HDTVs. Today Samsung is revered as a company that others look to for design originality.

For Samsung ReD has completed numerous projects related to user-centric technolo­gies for the television and mobile space.

[Banner image by Soroush Karimi via Unsplash]