IFA International 2019 DAY 1 Edition

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
THE KEY TRENDS
CURRENTLY ARE AROUND
SCALE, SOUND AND SMART
HOME.
Rod White
Head of Design TPV Group
BEHIND THE SCREEN
Philips designer Rod White explains how his company
is “reimagining” TVs
Ambilight is unique to Philips, adding another dimension…
just one of the brand’s key selling points today. Rod White,
Head of Design for the TPV group, shares with us his first
memories of what sets Philips TV design apart.
I first encountered Philips TV in
1994 at a design exhibition called
“TV at the Crossroads” in Tokyo,
where I was working at the time.
Philips Design had reimagined how
TV’s could use unique materials and
forms to better fit the needs of users.
This ranged from almost handcraft
to high tech translucent mouldings
and the first hint of ambient lighting.
It was an inspiration and what led to
me applying to join Philips Design.
What do you see as being the key
trends in global TV design today,
and how does Philips fit into this?
The key trends currently are around
scale, sound and smart home.
Scale is being pushed by larger OLED
panels, to allow amazing quality
while taking up less space on the
wall. We are very much about finding
solutions to bring larger screen sizes
in meaningful product solutions.
Due to the challenge of available
space in OLED for sound, we have
been exploring visible and separate
sound volumes with Bowers &
Wilkins, the best Audio brand
in the world. This year at IFA we
are revealing our new extended
OLED range with the 934 and floor
standing flagship 984.
Smart home isn’t new. We have had
a voice recognition button on our
remote controls for a few years now
and this will continue as it brings
our consumers the reassurance they
want from smart devices to know
when they are active and when not.
What design elements would you
say you are most proud of in all the
designs you’ve done over the years?
The idea of adding a rear light onto
a TV to add ambient light appeared
from that concept touring show
I saw in Tokyo. A few years after
joining Philips Design I worked on a
project called New Vision. The final
design had two small translucent
feet which had lighting inside as
both ambient lighting and a wakeup
function linked to the Junghans
analogue clock.
How does OLED technology
facilitate design?
From a pure design standpoint, the
benefit is in dimensions. OLED gives
basically a frontal edgeless frame to
the screen content and a thickness
of a few millimetres, so the design
opportunities are very much about
floating that screen surface together
with the visible sound above the
table in a way that fits well into
modern homes.
What about integrating high-end
audio? That must be challenging.
Working with Bowers & Wilkins
on our OLED+ products enabled
us to bring in a custom fabric from
Kvadrat for the speaker. This made
a clear space for us to play in and
allow the products to stand out. This
can be clearly seen on the new OLED
984 centre tweeter detail.
What would you say are the three
key selling points of Philips TVs in
terms of design?
I believe our three key points are
to be meaningfully outstanding,
superior material craftsmanship
and always lead by our consumers’
needs, never by technology push
www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Friday 6 th September 2019
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