As an entrepreneur whose main business is the teacher of the China Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang Junjie has been trying to explore the path of better integration of aesthetic innovation and business through self-built studios. He believes that aesthetic innovation and business science complement each other and are not contradictory. Grasping the balance between the two, aesthetic design will undoubtedly become a major weapon for enterprises in commodity competition.
Source | Manager Media's Manager magazine
Reporter / Jiang Qiuxia
With the rise of the national tide in the field of consumer goods such as Hanfu, small household appliances, shoes and bags, milk tea, etc., further excavating the charm of the new era of oriental culture, and integrating oriental cultural elements more into commodities, is a new opportunity for the emergence of current consumer demand.
"I've always thought aesthetic design and the business relationship are close because we're all creating value for consumers." Zhang Junjie, founder and design director of SOZEN Design Agency, said that in the future, the integration of aesthetics and business will become more and more important, because of the personalization of consumer needs and hobbies, and the enterprises that provide products also need to rely on local culture for personalized expression. Enterprises in many fields such as mainland consumption, automobiles, and home furnishings have the characteristics of oriental symbols, which shows that enterprises also hope to have a position, a characteristic, and a point of view. Moreover, many companies realize that this design that incorporates cultural elements will gradually build the competitiveness of their products and thus win the business.
In addition to the founder, Zhang Junjie also has multiple identities, a doctor of design, and is currently the director and associate professor of the Industrial Design Department of the School of Design and Art of China Academy of Art, mainly researching the field of cross-cultural design. He stressed that his main job is to be a university teacher, and starting a studio is a career pursuit of his own. He has always hoped to explore the path where innovative applications of cultural aesthetics can win recognition and success in the consumer market. After seven or eight years of development and precipitation, the studio he founded can provide services in different fields such as product design, packaging design, brand design, visual design, etc., and is a cross-integrated design platform. For different markets, it has launched a number of brands including SOZEN, Palm, Torrent, etc.
How did you transition from a university professor who taught and educated people to a studio founder who started a business? How to grasp the balance between aesthetic innovation and commercial value? Zhang Junjie said: "I really don't think there is a contradiction between this. In fact, many commodities, including various cars, will have higher and higher requirements for the entire aesthetics, which are actually complementary. It is not actually an imposed aesthetic, it is not to say that pasting a picture and changing a color is called aesthetics. Even if it is an appliance, it looks uncomfortable, whether it is good or not, the two are combined. ”
Bamboo as a material to empower the handicraft industry
The first thing that made Zhang Junjie a hit was "Susheng", a brand of art creation inspired by bamboo. In the second half of 2011, Zhang Junjie led the students to do fieldwork in the Shengzhou area of Shaoxing and got acquainted with the director of a bamboo weaving factory. Under his leadership, he visited bamboo products such as figures and animals woven using the unique local bamboo weaving process. Zhang Junjie was attracted by the unique weaving process, but it was a pity that such a good craft was dusted in the countryside. Can you have a better collision with the aesthetic design and innovation that you are good at? As a result, he opened the exploration and thinking of traditional craftsmanship + aesthetic innovation + business.
These bamboo weave craftsmen who live in the countryside have been engaged in bamboo weaving for twenty or thirty years. With the development of the machine industry, this bamboo product is also gradually declining in the market, and even reduced to a marginal product. Good craftsmanship cannot therefore be passed on to the next generation. The emergence of Zhang Junjie and SOZEN actually brought the hope of these traditional craftsmen to enter a new era and integrate into the new market.
"Only with consumers, with buyers' markets, and willing to accept these kinds of bamboo crafts, can these craftsmen have a way out." Even his next generation, other young talents are willing to join the industry. Zhang Junjie said that doing SOZEN this project is not simply to use bamboo products to practice their aesthetic concepts, but also an experiment with a sense of social responsibility. Traditional handicraft is the guarantee of the project, SOZEN tries to combine it with business through the intervention of designers, through the intervention of aesthetic innovators, to rationally shape its value. This can not only realize the inheritance of handicraft culture, but also realize the practical value of its own aesthetic design.
In fact, Zhang Junjie's cooperation with these bamboo weaving craftsmen has indeed brought great changes to them. The scale of the bamboo weaving factory that is on the verge of decline has expanded, and Zhang Junjie also organized designers at home and abroad such as Switzerland to visit and exchange, activating the vitality of local bamboo weaving handicrafts and providing new possibilities for rural revitalization and common prosperity. In Zhang Junjie's view, his cooperation with local craftsmen, from a business point of view, actually builds a new commercial closed loop, using the most traditional handicrafts, empowered by designers to deconstruct and reshape, design it into a language that modern consumers can accept, and then make it into a contemporary product.
To this day, using bamboo as a material is still a very good creative theme in Zhang Junjie's daily work. But as an industrial designer who specializes in aesthetic innovation, he has a higher pursuit and planning for himself and his studio. Therefore, since around 2014, the studio has developed enterprise services such as products, vision, packaging, etc., and has cooperated with hundreds of companies or brands to innovate so far.
Among them, "in the palm of the hand" is the brand born at this stage. Zhang Junjie positioned it as "an industrial product brand based on popular experiential products". One of its flagship products at that time was a lotus-shaped metal bookmark, "in fact, I hope that with this product, we can return to a state of paper reading, which actually represents the concept of a good life, hoping that through a very simple product, it can quickly arouse everyone's resonance." "This brand has been sold in hundreds of bookstores across the country, and has more than 10 sales channels on the Internet, which has truly become a creative brand that integrates aesthetics and business, and has also allowed Zhang Junjie to think more about the combination of the two."
Whether it is the introduction of cage-woven chandeliers and table lamps that integrate traditional bamboo weaving techniques, or bamboo fans designed with the face of the zodiac, the series of designs made by Zhang Junjie and his studio team have a strong oriental cultural atmosphere behind them. "I think any designer should respect the culture of their country, and should try to pass on this culture and carry it forward, which is also cultural confidence, so as a creator, I have been insisting."
Zhang Junjie often brings his own designs abroad to participate in exhibitions, and according to his feedback, many foreign designers who come into contact with him are very much in line with oriental culture. At the same time, many leading enterprises in the domestic consumption field are also very concerned about the innovation of cultural and creative products, such as the launch of the Forbidden City's joint products, and consumers are also very willing to pay for it. Zhang Junjie believes that many enterprises have been consciously integrating local culture to do business innovation, and try to create their own exclusive competitiveness, this development momentum is very good, help domestic enterprises to become more and more cultural self-confidence, gradually achieve self-expression, into the world's discourse system.
Reflect on the interaction between aesthetics and business
In the "experiment" of exploring the integration of aesthetics and business in seven or eight years, Zhang Junjie also deepened his thinking and understanding step by step. He introduced that in fact, when doing the "Susheng" brand, he also encountered many problems.
First, the cost is high and the efficiency is low. Not only the labor cost of handicrafts, because the cooperative bamboo weaving handicraft people live in the countryside, dialects prevail, first of all, in the cost of communication encountered a lot of problems, which is also an important reason for the low efficiency of finished products. Second, the product is not standardized enough. Because it is handmade, it is inevitable that the finished product will be uneven due to the different skill levels of the craftsmen, and the defective rate is also higher than that of machine-scale production. Third, it is difficult to manage circulation. For example, during transportation, it is inevitable that bamboo will be crushed. Fourth, pricing is difficult. According to the accounting of input production, it is not only necessary to consider the labor cost of hand-made, but also to calculate the comprehensive input through marketing exhibition promotion, quality control logistics, etc., to achieve balance of payments or surplus, high prices are inevitable, and this will undoubtedly lose a lot of consumers, and it is difficult to become a popular commodity.
Zhang Junjie gradually realized, "If I don't understand business, my design may be just pure beauty, rather than a product that can be accepted by consumers." He said that what has been experienced more deeply over the years is that product design is not just a thing itself, not just a problem of beauty and ugliness, it is related to whether the commodity can exist in the market for a long time, how long the life cycle is, and whether it can make an industry prosperous. These are the reasons that prompted him to finally choose to study in business school, and he hopes to answer his questions.
As a student of the MBA Maker Class of Zhejiang University in 2021, Zhang Junjie admitted that he learned a lot of systematic business knowledge here and met friends from all walks of life. "The atmosphere in the class was exceptional, it was beyond my imagination. I originally just wanted to try it, but after arriving in this class, the communication between teachers and classmates was particularly pleasant, and I did not have a particularly utilitarian idea, that is, I got along very naturally, and also learned about all walks of life and business-related information, the original circle is relatively narrow. In the classroom, through Wu Xiaobo's "Strategic Management" and Yan Jin's "Human Resource Management" courses, I learned a lot of management knowledge that I did not know too much before. "Coming to Zhejiang University for MBA study broadened his business circle and knowledge, which made him particularly pleased."
It is reported that the MBA Maker Class of Zhejiang University aims to cultivate innovative entrepreneurs and provide students with systematic professional theoretical knowledge learning and high-energy entrepreneurial practice ecology for students to start a business. To this end, Zhejiang University has established an excellent team of curriculum teachers, including academically specialized teachers, course teachers and practical tutors with rich experience in innovation and entrepreneurship venture capital, and has also established a student organization Chuangxiang Council that runs through previous students, through course learning, visits to well-known enterprises, entrepreneurial competitions, special lectures and other ways to stimulate students' entrepreneurial spirit, improve entrepreneurial skills and literacy, and a number of potential entrepreneurial projects with distinctive characteristics have emerged.
"Zhang Junjie has strong research ability in aesthetics and product design, and is actively involved in innovation and entrepreneurship practice. By joining the MBA Entrepreneurship Management Program, you can not only have a more systematic knowledge of innovative entrepreneurial activities, but also better integrate into the innovation and entrepreneurship ecology of Zhejiang University and enhance the ability of high-quality entrepreneurship. Wu Aiqi, academic director of the MBA Maker Class of Zhejiang University, said that his joining the MBA Maker Class is very consistent with the talent training concept of "Business +" of the School of Management of Zhejiang University, so that business and humanities, science and technology and other fields are deeply integrated, and more new innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities are stimulated in cross-compounding. His innovation and entrepreneurship practice is characterized by typical multidisciplinary knowledge. He hopes that in the future, his entrepreneurial practice can help more artists to better commercialize their creative achievements, and help more Chinese enterprises find new development opportunities under the aesthetic economy and experience economy with new ideas and new ways of aesthetics and product design. This is also what we are looking forward to as young entrepreneurs with social ideals and feelings.
Zhang Junjie has always adhered to the original intention of "making aesthetic innovation more popular", hoping that his studio can become a platform for excellent original designers, not only to produce creative content, provide value for partners, at the same time, tap the value of oriental culture, and create some works independently. Moreover, he firmly believes that aesthetic innovation and business are not opposites, there is a strong integration relationship, and in the future, China's creative industry will become larger and larger, which requires many, many creators to jump out, and they need to be encouraged. This coincides with the purpose of Zhejiang University's MBA Maker Class to empower young entrepreneurs.
Facing unknown challenges undoubtedly brings more interdisciplinary knowledge challenges, management and operation challenges to the creators of cultural and creative products, which is why Zhang Junjie continues to pay attention to and strengthen their own internal cultivation when they continue to practice their aesthetic concepts. Zhejiang University MBA Maker Class is the first MBA program in China to win the Outstanding Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Project Award issued by the National Steering Committee for Postgraduate Education of Business Administration Degrees, and in the future, it will also provide better business education for more outstanding entrepreneurs like Zhang Junjie, and cultivate more outstanding entrepreneurial management talents who have a leading role in the mainland's social economy.
School of Management, Zhejiang University "Business +": Guided by the social needs of the next 20 years, the talent training ecosystem with the goal of cultivating first-class leaders and management scientists is adopted in a cross-integrated training method. With the connotation of "management theory + scientific and technological insight + humanistic literacy", the School of Management of Zhejiang University took the lead in establishing a "business +" education ecosystem in the country, and thus launched a series of teaching reforms.
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