The OLED Shelf Winning the Red Dot Design Award 2022 | Experience | OLED SPACE

LG Display has always been committed to exploring every possible concept for design experience and customer insight that maximize OLED’s benefits. The OLED Shelf is born from a concept LG Display discovered in collaboration with German design studio Phoenix Design. It sought to achieve a new identity and focused on possibilities and values transparent displays could offer.

The OLED Shelf was recognized as the winner of the Red Dot Design Award in the Design Concept category, one of the three most prestigious international design awards. This time, 288 designs, which represent 9% of all the entries were named winners. Here, let us discuss the values and traits of the OLED Shelf that made it the winner of the Red Dot Design Award.

OLED Shelf, the Home Display without Space Constraints

The music player is presented on the top of OLED Shelf screen, and the wall behind it is visible because of a transparent display.

The edge of the transparent OLED Shelf next to the study bookcase shines, creating a fireplace-like feeling in a dark room.

Increasingly, home appliances are not just reflecting various needs but coming in various forms and designs, becoming more and more seamless part of the home. Now the design of a home appliance is expected to offer as much product experience as it could along the paths between the living room, bedroom, and kitchen and should fit in wherever it is placed.

The OLED Shelf was the concept that epitomized all those trends. Unlike the days when TVs had long been the first and only display introduced in homes and usually become the centerpiece wherever they were put, they have gradually lost loyal consumers and become perceived as a bulky, black panel since the constant arrival of numerous display products, including laptops and smartphones. LG Display and Phoenix Design gave a new identity as Home Display to TVs, once a centerpiece in the living room that had increasingly been left unused over time.

Values Created within and Delivered from the Display Itself

The square screen of the OLED Shelf has greater values of content experience to offer than the previous 16:9 aspect ratio screens. When the Transparent Mode is on, AOD(Always On Display) content and features are available and the space looks more spacious and aesthetically pleasing as it serves as an object. You can always switch it to other modes to focus on the image or video, which will lower a shade to physically block the light. The OLED Shelf enables multiple channels on the single panel and has various modes to offer, including Art Mode and Movie Mode.

The OLED Shelf has incorporated display into furniture: when the display is turned off, it is a shelf with a transparent panel that lets only the necessary information gently slide, and when the picture quality needs to be maximized, like for movies, a shade comes in to block the light. The OLED Shelf, in this sense, is based on our discovery of a scenario that combines state-of-the-art technology and design concepts for valuable space and user experience.

A man is working on something with laptop while sitting in front of the OLED panel.

The Red Dot Design Award is a design competition led by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Germany. It is an international commercial design competition that has prize categories of product design, brand & communication design and design concept. The Red Dot Design Award is one of the most prestigious, internationally recognized design awards along with the German iF Design Award and IDEA, sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America(IDSA). So far, numerous globally-renowned companies, including fashion brands, car and electronics manufacturers, and construction companies, have participated in the competition, seeking recognition for the excellence of their design.

The prize category where the OLED Shelf was named the winner is the Design Concept category, which focuses on creative design concepts, ideas, and visions. Although innovation is always headed towards the future, the past and present are its building blocks. A delicate process of in-depth contemplation of what homes were like without TVs, how TVs have changed the scenes of homes, and how new technologies should facilitate the evolution of a TV was translated into the OLED Shelf Home Display. Such commitment and challenge have made it possible for OLED Shelf to earn the highest recognition as the winner of the Red Dot Design Award.