B&O Design - A Legend of 75 Years

---He Renke Professor, Department of Industrial Design, Hunan University

In the international design community, Bang & Olufsen (B&O) is a very resounding name. In the annual international design yearbook and other design publications, B&O's designs are unique and novel in design museums and design exhibitions around the world. Concerned by people. Although B&O's products have not yet entered the Chinese mainland due to price and other factors, B&O has gained considerable recognition among Chinese designers and audio enthusiasts. B&O is a Danish company that produces home audio and video equipment. Over the years, the company has viewed design as a lifeline, systematically studying the technological development of new products on the one hand, and targeting the highest level on the international market on the other, and is committed to adapting technical facilities to the home environment, and has designed a number of excellent quality products. The products that are elegant in shape, easy to operate and rich in the company's unique features have reached world-class standards and are renowned in Western countries. The design of B&O became a classic and symbol of Danish design. The author first learned about B&O in 1987, when the author was studying industrial design at the Royal Danish Academy of Art. Under the arrangement of the Danish Design Association, they had the opportunity to visit the B&O headquarters in the northwest of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. Accompanied by J.Palshoj, the company's design manager, he visited the factory and the company's exhibition center and talked with him about the topic of corporate design management. This visit left a deep impression on me and made me have a strong interest in B&O. The year 2000 marks the 75th anniversary of B&O's establishment. I would like to make this a small memorial!

On November 17, 1925, two young Danish engineers, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, co-founded Bang & Olufsen in a small hangar in the small town of Quistrup in Denmark. They designed and produced radios, unveiling the history of B&O. prelude. By 1927, the company had more than 30 employees and produced seven-light tube radios that were very advanced at that time. The music and other programs broadcast on radio could be reproduced naturally and realistically, bringing good reputation to the company. In 1928, the company formally launched the B&O trademark. The font design of the trademark was obviously influenced by the Bauhaus graphic design style. It was quite modern and has been used up to now. Soon, the trademark was used together with the company's famous slogan "Danmark of quality" and became one of the most influential and valuable brands in Denmark. In the 1930s, the rich and poor society varied greatly. The annual income of the general working class is not enough to buy a radio or record player. Therefore, B&O's products were initially targeted at the consumers who pursued taste and quality. This positioning establishes B&O's unique design policy and management model, and also forms the unique position and distinctive image of the company in the market. It is no accident that B&O's products have become royalty-designated products in countries such as Denmark and the United Kingdom. In the 1950s, Denmark’s furniture industry achieved great success in the international market with the concept of “Danish design”. B&O received a great deal of inspiration and emphasized its own personality and characteristics. In the early 1960s, B&O was proposed. : Slogans of taste and quality before price." This slogan has also become an important tool for corporate strategy. It clearly and clearly shows the company's goals and market image to all employees, especially the designers. It lays the foundation for the B&O communication strategy and the basic principles of the product strategy. Since then, B&O designs have been presented to the world in a new and exciting form.

The earliest B&O-specific product design was the Beolab5000 stereo radio designed by the famous designer Jacob Jensen in 1967. B&O's design assignment to Yan Sen asked him to “create a European Hi-fi model that conveys strong, precise and recognizable features”. Yansen creatively designed a brand-new linear tuning panel. Its refined and concise design language and convenient and intuitive operation mode established the classic B&O design style, which is widely reflected in a series of product designs. When talking about his own design, Yonsen said: "Design is a language. It can understand for anyone...." For B&O, design is not an aesthetic problem. It is an effective medium. Through this medium, the product can express its own ideas, connotations and functions. Therefore, basicity and simplicity should be two very important principles of product design. The operation of the product must be limited to the scope of the basic functions, removing all unnecessary spending. Mies's “less is more” principle has been fully realized in the B&O design. Its purpose is to establish the simplest and most direct connection between users and products. This opened the way to Japanese products that overemphasized high-tech features. It is worth noting that this consistent and concise style is very much in keeping with the simple design tradition of Japanese culture, and B&O's products are very popular in the Japanese market. Following the success of the Beolab 5000, the Beogram 4000 right-angle horn player further established B&O's position in the industry. The phonograph features a linear right-angle pickup system that keeps the stylus and sculpting lines tangentially in the process of picking up the sound, thereby replaying music in exactly the same way as recording, realizing true fidelity. In the design of the Beogram 4000, almost all of the technology was hidden, playing music with a "touch" operation and producing a flat, smooth design language. After the wide application of remote control technology, B&O products basically eliminated manual operation keys, making the appearance of the product more concise.

In order to maintain the unique personality of B&O and create a unified product image, the company has made great efforts in design management and has achieved remarkable results. Due to various considerations, the company did not have its own professional design department, but used freelance designers through careful design management to establish the company's own design features. Despite the company's wide range of products and the hands of different designers, they all have a B&O style, which is the success of design management. B & O's design team is international, because the company itself is international, more than 85% of products for export. The company has established stable business relationships with many designers in the countries of the United Kingdom, the United States, the United States, France, and other countries. Some designers have cooperated with the company for many years, which is longer than the majority of employees in the company. They have accumulated valuable experience for the company and created the continuity of the design. J. Balthau, head of design management at B&O, a prominent figure in European design management, said when he talked about his work: “Design management means choosing the right designer, coordinating their work, and making the design work Products and market policies are the same.” “They believe that if B&O does not have clear policies in terms of products, design, and markets, the company will not be able to effectively manage these scattered and independent freelance designers. With regard to the design style of B&O, for this reason, the company formulated seven basic design principles in the late 1960s:

1) Fidelity: It truly restores sounds and pictures, giving people an immersive feeling.

2) Yi Ming: Comprehensive consideration of product features, operating modes, and material use make the design itself a language of self-expression, thereby establishing communication between the designer and the user of the product.

3) Reliability: Establish credibility in products, sales, and other activities. Product specifications should be as detailed and complete as possible.

4) Family: Technology is for the benefit of mankind, not the other way around. Products should be coordinated with the home environment as much as possible to make people feel close.

5) Conciseness: Electronic products have no natural form, design must respect human-computer relations, and operation should be simple. Design is the expression of the times, not the short-sighted fashion.

6) Personality: B&O's products are small-volume and diversified to meet consumers' individuality requirements.

7) Creativity: As a medium-sized company, B&O cannot carry out basic research in the field of electronics, but it can adopt the latest technology and combine it with the spirit of innovation and innovation.

There are no specific provisions on the appearance of products in the seven principles, but through these seven principles, a consistent design thinking method and evaluation design standard have been established so that different designers' new product designs all exhibit the same features. . In addition, the company has its own traditions in materials, surface processes, and color and texture processing. This ensures the continuity of the design and creates a simple and elegant B&O style. Just as many famous companies in the world have experienced, B&O companies have faced survival crisis many times. The most serious of these was in the 1980s. Due to the competition of Japanese products and the ineffective marketing of the company, B&O was caught in an unprecedented crisis and once had to marry with Philips. With the evolution of the concept of the times, the traditional combined Hi-fi model and the rigorous "hard-edged art" style in B&O design have also been severely challenged and new breakthroughs must be sought. Many people predict that B & 0 will be sluggish, even from the international design stage. However, just as the legendary phoenix nirvana and death, B&O company after a life and death test, miraculously achieved a corporate revival under the efforts of a group of employees who deeply love the company's philosophy and culture. In 1991, B&O introduced the Beosystem 2500 audio system, which marked B&O's bid to bid farewell to the predominantly black, uninformed box-box audio system, creating a new concept of vertical “all in one system”. )" and welcome the general trend of "high technology, high interest" in the post-industrial era with changing colors. The soul of B&O's transformation is the famous industrial designer David Lewis. His and his design team created a revolutionary new model for the sound system: The different functions of the sound are integrated into one, the middle of the elegant Behind the glass door is a vertical CD, so that people can enjoy the music at the same time, you can see the CD's movement, "good to see!" Beosystem 2500 has become a sign of B & O rebirth, and B & O's design has once again reached the tide of the times head. This experience of B&O is similar to how Apple Computer Co., Ltd. achieved the rebirth of the company with a colorful iMac in the 1990s! After Beosystem 2500, B&O launched a series of new concepts in audio systems, televisions, and telephones. The Beosound Century wall-mounted audio system is a compact, sophisticated, all-in-one design whose infrared remote sensing device detects hand movements and controls the lateral opening and closing of glass doors. Beosound 9000 takes this concept to the extreme. The machine can achieve 6-disc playback. The lightweight, transparent body can be placed horizontally or vertically, or it can be hung on the wall vertically or horizontally. People appreciate the music while watching the colorful graphic design on the CD and the precise movement of the laser pickups. B&O's TVs and telephones also changed the previous black and white gray tone to satisfy consumers' individuality requirements with rich colors. B&O's speaker design has always been unique