매거진B (영문판) Magazine B, 매거진비 정기구독

■ About the Issue

Welcome to the 71st edition of B.

Toward the end of each year, I often find myself reciting the digits of the upcoming year in my head. With less than two months left of 2018, I can’t help but get hung up on the surreal sound of the number 2019 every time I say it out loud. It’s probably because this bizarrely futuristic number—a year depicted in the movies and shows as the “future” when I was a child— is now staring right at me from my desk calendar. After all, the “future” in the 1982 film Blade Runner was the year 2019 and the “future” visited by Martyin the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II was three years ago in 2015. As someone who has made it to this distant future, I’ve come to realize that there are many forces trying to push forward and still many fighting to maintain the existing order. The disparity between the future scenes in those movies and the reality of today may be due to technological limitations orthe lack of technological commercialization, but it could also be that radical ideas not speaking to the emotional needs of humans have naturally fallen to the wayside. Through trends and progressions over time, we’ve experienced that sometimes, leading the way too fast is equally as concerning as falling too far behind.

In that sense, the brand of this month, DJI, is more than qualified as a brand offering “a product of the future.” Since its foundation in 2006 in Shenzhen, China, DJI has taken over 70 percent of the drone market share, surpassing all competition to reachthe top. But what’s really remarkable is the fact that their growth and development is firmly based ontheir interaction with the end users. Drones have infinite scalability in terms of technical definition, functional spectrum, and utility value. Originally developed for military purposes, drones are now used in various fields: industrial drones for agriculture and surveying, professional drones for media and film, and recreational drones for personal entertainment. DJIis lauded particularly for successfully transforming drones into popular products that users can relateto as a hobby, much like audio systems or cameras. Founder Frank Wang is a graduate of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who persistently pursued research on automatic flight control systems to eventually turn DJI into a company with original drone technology and patents. The company is obviously rooted in technology, and they’re still very much devoted to R&D, but they have also adopted flexibility as a way to channel that intensity. As one employee said in a media interview, “DJI has always thought up ways to make it easier for more people to approach and use drones.”

“Easy” has become a great virtue in our time. We see more and more cases where the down-to-earth guy next door steals the limelight over the behind-the-scenes genius, where a street brand that’s not afraidto make fun of itself draws more attention than an exclusive luxury brand. DJI seems to have cleverly mastered the art of taking center stage. Read through the interviews of DJI users in this issue, and you’ll find that everyone from novice to expert expresses their satisfaction about the easy operation, simple structure, and reasonable price of DJI products. DJI’s Phantom, launched in 2013, was the first out-of-the-box drone that let users skip the assembly process entirely and start piloting right away. The Mavic, a foldable drone, and the Spark, a palm-sized mini drone, which were successively released after the Phantom, won overthe public, penetrating their way into the realm of everyday life. Another one of DJI’s key strategies was design: the neat appearances of the drones appealed to even the most non-tech-savvy people with little to no understanding of drone mechanics.

DJI’s success can be explained by the key conceptof “communication technique.” The reason brandslike Apple, Marvel, and Nike infallably lead the packis because they have a brand language everyone can easily understand. They are able to take serious issues like race relations or the origin of mankind and create them into intriguing visuals, or take professional sports gear and technology and turn them into a form of cultural commentary or entertainment. Looking at their products, we see that DJI has taken a similar path as well.

Eunsung Park

Content & Editorial Director