This week I'm in Korea, taking a tour of Samsung's home base operations. Yesterday I had an amazing opportunity to sit down with the designers of some stand out products, such as the new R7 television and a mobile handset set for exclusive release in Italy as a Versace branded design.

Through the magic of a translator we discussed Samsung's growing strength as a design-centric corporation. The classic situation of the "design champion" form of design management is alive and well here, with Samsung's Chairman having specified a bold new vision of design and creativity as the heart of the business back in 1996.

The R7 in white-red: what do you think, ladies?

What was interesting is Samsung's three phased approach to becoming a design leader and, as crass as the term is, a "trend setter". To 2005 they have worked on pushing their designs to show a clear Samsung identity, and to the end of this year they have targeted the production of original designs. Next on the agenda, through to 2009, they aim to produce designs that deliver on the idea of "emotional experience".

That last was a bit of a corporate speak moment in an otherwise excellent discussion on design, but the sense of "emotion" they are aiming for is already starting to appear in the design of the R7. Building on the original Samsung design of the R5, a starting point here was to create a television that would appeal to a woman. It's a fair call that most TVs are pretty masculine in style. They're big, bulky, and have certainly joined the car as a blokey status symbol. Commercially, to appeal to a female could be a very lucrative angle here.

The R7 has hidden the speakers, their aim being to take away all distraction and focus the object on the screen. The hero style of white-red also makes the box itself almost disappear. Apparently in testing, though, the black is still preferred. Maybe they were the results of the bloke tests.

Differentiation is difficult in the incredibly competitive TV market. It's good to see a major electronics manufacturer identify and work hard to push their production away from building boxes and toward producing design objects. We all want our homes to look good, and TVs can detract from an effort to design a stylish living room (again, unless you are eager to slap a giant black box on a wall in the name of showing off how big your "screen" is).

Price. Performance. Design. I'm glad that last one is starting to get a bit more play in this game.