Li Kebei is an industrial designer from Chengdu. He was born and raised in China and later came to the U.S. for schooling. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, he moved to San Francisco to join the design firm New Deal Design. Recently, Kebei has left his consulting job to pursue a master’s degree in design at Stanford University.
From his pressure-sensitive lamp, which adjusts the lamp’s brightness based on the weight of objects placed on top of it, to a tin sake cup that can hold different amounts of liquid from different sides of the cup, Kebei’s designs often strike a beautiful balance between innovation and practicality.
李科贝是一位来自四川成都的工业设计师，高中毕业之前都一直在成都这座城市生活、学习。大学学习他选择远赴美国罗德岛设计学院，本科毕业之后他加入了位于旧金山的New Deal Design设计工作室。最近李科贝辞去这份工作，进入斯坦福大学攻读设计硕士学位。
李科贝的设计有很多奇思妙想，就连他自己也会说自己的作品有时候只是为了好玩。比如他设计的“压力敏感灯”，灯的亮度调节不是靠开关控制，而是靠放置在灯上的物体的重量决定，越重的物体会令灯越亮。可别以为他的设计都是为了好玩，有一些既有趣又实用，比如他设计的一款双面shot酒杯，酒杯两面都有凹面，只是深度不同，能容纳的酒的量也不同，实在酒鬼们都应该拥有的一件装逼利器。
Neocha: How does industrial design influence the way you view things around you, whether it is products or buildings or even modes of thinking? At the same time, how does your own personality or personal quirks influence your design work?
Li Kebei: If I see something that I love – and it doesn’t even need to be a design object, I just can’t move. My friends know how long it can take me to finish a good design store or gallery. I can meditate in front of some good pieces for hours. At the same time, I can finish a mediocre store in just a few seconds. I am very selective.
A large part of my work is about questioning: why people use certain things in certain ways, and what defines certain objects; for example, I once designed a pressure-sensitive lamp. The brightness and intensity of the light is controlled by the amount of pressure that is applied. I like to use whimsical and disarming ways to raise basic fundamental questions. The results can be quite interesting.
新茶：你觉得工业设计方面的学习有没有影响你看待周围事物的方式？可能是一个产品、一幢楼甚至是一种思考方式？同时，你的性格中有没有哪方面影响了你的设计？
李科贝：如果我喜欢一样东西，甚至不用是一个设计品，我就会走不动路了。我的朋友都知道我会花多少时间去完成我满意的店铺或画廊的设计。我可以在我喜欢的作品前面驻足好几个小时。当然，我也可以用2秒钟就完成一个平庸的店铺设计，我是有选择性的。
我的工作中有大部分时间是关于自我提问。为什么人们用特定的方式使用特定的物品？又是什么定义了这些特定的物品。比如我设计了一个压力灯，将压力的大小与灯的亮度联系到一起，越重的物体放在灯上会产生更亮的光，看上去似乎挺不实用的，但我喜欢用这种异想天开和消除戒心的方式来引导出一些哲学问题，有时候结果可能就是为了好玩。
Neocha: Your design style appears to carry with it subtle details and nods to different cultures. What do you think is the importance of subtlety and cultural referencing in design?
Li Kebei: Cultural reference can be a dangerous thing. There are too many poor executions that lack deeper thinking. That’s not to say using cultural references is a bad way to design. It’s just not usually done well.
Young designers tend to overvalue how much they know about their own culture. When I grew up in Chengdu in the late 90’s, there was an urban development agenda that was trying to make it into just another homogenous Chinese city. In this sense, my childhood was rather culturally deprived. It’s kind of a harsh thing to say but I think it is accurate. It isn’t that my childhood wasn’t fun or anything. It was just a bit bland culturally, not very special. I picked up my interest in Chinese culture and tradition only later in college, when I was living in the U.S. ironically.
新茶：你的设计中有一些微妙的细节，也借鉴了各种不同的文化。你觉得这种细节和借鉴的重要性是什么？
李科贝：文化借鉴通常来说有点危险。有太多失败的借鉴案例，太多缺乏深层思考的借鉴。我并不是说文化借鉴这种方式不好，只是这种方式并没有被很好地利用。
年轻的设计师有时候高估了自己对于本国文化的理解程度。我是成都人，在上世纪90年代后期，我几乎和成都一起“成长”的，成都的这种“成长”不过是变成了另一个毫无特色的中国城市罢了。在某种意义上，我童年时候的一些文化被剥夺了，这么说可能很残酷，但确实有理由的。不是说我的童年没有乐趣或是什么，只是有些平淡，并不是很特别。讽刺的是，我是来到美国读大学后才重新开始对中国文化的感兴趣的。
Neocha: Do you see significant differences in the way industrial design works in a place like Shanghai versus in San Francisco, or other places in the United States?
Li Kebei: The design industry in the macro sense is very broad and can actually mean very different things. The more commercial, technology-driven design field that I have experience in is less tied to the specific locality of the company, so a tech design firm in London might not differ very much from one in Shenzhen. Phones, wearable products, consumer electronics, these types of products are less grounded in a local “culture” in the traditional sense. They are true to their own nature as electronic products, but the nature of their development is interestingly almost the same globally.
新茶：你觉得上海和旧金山，或者其他美国城市相比，在工业设计方面有什么显著的区别吗？
李科贝：工业设计这个概念是很大的，而且具体到操作性上也有很多不同。我觉得越是偏商业的、技术的设计领域越是和公司的城市特性没什么关系。就好像一家伦敦的科技公司和一家深圳的科技公司可能就没什么不同。电话、便携式产品、电子消费品这些领域的产品设计都是比较少地融合当地的传统文化的，这些产品都有属于自己的真正的属性，全球同步化的程度也很高。
Neocha: Where are you headed intellectually and artistically with your design work at the moment? Do you have a sense of the direction you would like your work to take, or the effect you’d like it to have on those who will see and use it?
Li Kebei: At the moment things are pretty messy. I have lots of raw materials I need to piece together, literally and metaphorically. I suppose that that is what the master’s degree is for. I would like to have more technical understanding of and autonomy in the process.
Artistically, I have always had an appreciation for austere and monolithic things, daily objects that are basic yet fundamental. I curate a Tumblr called Geometric Rationale which collects the works of people like Brancusi, Noguchi, Judd, De Wain Valentine, you name it. I have a great respect for people who really push the boundaries of manufacturing and materiality; for example, Jony Ive, Marc Newson, Ross Lovegrove, to name a few.
新茶：目前你的设计理念是什么？对于自己的设计方向有没有什么想法？你希望给使用者带来什么效果？
李科贝：目前来说还是挺混乱的。手头有很多原始的素材需要我来拼凑，无论从字面意思上还是比喻意义上，这大概就是研究生要研究的东西吧！当然我也想有更多技术层面上的理解和自主性的探索。
艺术方面来说，我一直以来都很喜欢质朴、整体感强的事物，那些生活中基础的必需品。我有一个Tumblr账号叫做Geometric Rationale，会放Brancusi，Noguchi，Judd，De Wain Valentine等人的作品。我也非常佩服那些制造和材料方面不断寻求突破的人们，像Jony Ive, Marc Newson, Ross Lovegrove这些人。
