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Interiors: Design your own homeware online

Think that Philippe Starck’s lemon squeezer, one of the most iconic homeware designs of all time, is overrated? Reckon that the Arco floor lamp is overexposed? Or that those Cath Kidston floral mugs are just too yummy-mummy? Well, if you’ve always secretly thought that you could do better, but a lack of formal design training has stopped you from trying, now could be your chance.

Source and more: Times Online

Nurturing the Inner Entrepreneur

Do you want to be a designer? I’m not talking about signing up for design school, but about having a say in the design of some of the things you use every day. You needn’t design them from scratch, though that could be an option; but you might like to choose the colors, or change their size and shape.

Source and more: New York Times

Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization 2009 Event

Last year Mikrocentrum introduced a new, international event: Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization. The event was co-organised by Rein van der Mast and covered both topics as well as how to apply these in an industrial environment. We are proud to announce the 2009 edition tittled: Rapid Manufacturing & Mass Customization. The event will take place November 17, 2009. Its location is still undecided, however we are expecting to find an interesting place in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands. This also means we can better accommodate our international audience, amongst which are Dutch, German and Belgian guests. 

If you have any topics you think would be interesting for the visitors please let us know. This year we will include open innovation because it can be linked to both of our main topics. We will focus primarily on applications instead of research. You can contact Mikrocentrum by e-mail or by phone +31402969934

Source: Mikrocentrum

The Future of Shopping: Custom Everything

The monthly business magazine Condé Nast Portfolio explores what the future holds for shopping now that retailers are hurting and consumers are expected to keep spending tight for 2009. Portfolio.com takes a look at the phenomenon of mass customization -a way of making standard consumer products as customizable as a Facebook page. And Wired.com dives into the DIY subculture, and meets a group of hobbyists who are starting to hack furniture and product design like it was all just Unix code.

Portfolio’s Perspective: Custom Everything
 by Sara Clemence


What happens when you can design your physical world as easily as you can reformat your blog? Bespoke products have always been available to anyone willing and able to pay the price, whether for an individually tailored suit or a customized car. In recent years, one of the big shifts in retail has been giving customers the ability to design their own versions of premium products—like wedding rings, pricey handbags, and Nikes—at prices that are comparable to the regular versions. Now, without most of us realizing it, we’re on the cusp of another big change. Thanks to market demands and developments in technology, we’re going to be living in a user-generated world, where everything we use can (and will) be customizable. It’s already happening, in ways both obvious and not.

Wired’s Perspective: In-Home Manufacturing
 by Jennifer Kahn


Some are already designing a future where physical objects can be downloaded,  just as software is today. As computer-aided design has become more accessible, the tools for fabrication have also become cheaper. New desktop 3D printers now cost 5,000 USD, while the price of a water-jet cutter, capable of slicing any material, from glass to marble, to tolerances of a hundredth of an inch, has fallen by half. If everyone has access to computer-controlled machine tools and advanced 3D printers, why ship an item from manufacturing plant to customer? Why not just fabricate the object near home, on demand?

Source: Putting People First

Mass Customization & Personalization

Mass Customization & Personalization (MCP) is the premier event in this field. Bridging academic research and management practice, the conference provides an interactive and interdisciplinary platform to share ideas about mass customization strategies and to discuss the latest technologies and enablers. 

October 4-8 2009, the conference will move to the first time to the Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, home of a very strong and active community of mass customization researchers and practitioners.

Graphic 12: Customise This

In its 12th issue, Graphic sets out to explore the current craze for customization -from recent trends in customized trainers, clothes and readymades to the latest series of Penguin Classics with blank covers allowing readers to draw, paint, design, sew, spray, scribble, sticker, cut, rip, glue-back-together or whatever they feel like doing to their own covers.   

This trend is more than just a reaction against mass-market blandness and corporate stiffness. It is also a welcome resurgence of individualism, craft and independence as well as a celebration of improvisation and creative freedom.

For this issue, the Graphic editors asked creatives from around the world to come up with toys, t-shirts, CD covers, skateboards, baseball caps, books, magazines, jeans, jumpers, slippers, pyjamas, cars, chairs, mugs, notebooks, postcards, plates, lampshades, mini-skirts, Russian dolls -you name it- and then customize them.

• ISBN: 978-90-6369-179-0
• Editor(s):Marc Valli & Richard Brereton
• Design: Matt Willey and Zoe Bather
• Notes: Graphic 12 contains 8 special pages with stuff that readers can customize themselves
• Format: paperback
• Dimensions: 28 x 22 cm
• Pages: 198

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Interview with Mass Customization guru Frank Piller

Frank Piller is a chair professor of management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University, Germany, one of Europe’s leading institutes of technology. He is also a founding faculty member of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. His recent research focuses on value co-creation between businesses and customers/users, and the interface between innovation management, operations management, and marketing. Go to interview.

Source: Ponoko Blog

Smart Customization Seminar 2008

The MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2008 (10-11 nov) is an in-depth coverage of one of today’s most important business trends. It is open to a distinguished group of professionals from diverse industries working on, implementing, or considering mass customization and personalization strategies and technologies. In addition, a small group of pre-eminent scholars will share leading-edge research on issues of importance and practicality to mass customization professionals.

Mass customization today is emerging from a pilot stage into a scalable and sustainable business strategy. We recently have seen a strong increase in investments and success stories of companies doing mass customization on a larger scale. The objective of the 2008 seminar is to take an intensive look at the success factors and how to do it aspects of mass customization and personalization.

Location: The MIT Faculty Club Cambridge, MA

Source: MIT

Database Mass Customization

As mass customization and configurators are becoming common currency worldwide, our configurator database is evolving rapidly. With the number of entries now exceeding 40,000 and still growing, cyLEDGE decided to make it available to everyone. As this resource continues to expand, we’ll always have an open ear for your suggestions. 

Confuguration database is the world’s biggest configurator database, featuring over 500 web-based configurators. The full version of the database covers 85 attributes per configurator, of which some are available online. Scientific users are granted free access to the offline database (42,500 entries) upon request.

Source: Confuguration database

Spoonflower: Print on demand

Spoonflower is a Fresh out of Beta startup that allows users to upload designs for fabric and have it printed on demand. This allows fashion designers to get short runs of a custom print, quilters to make their work less crazy, and artisans of all sorts to be free from the gauche patterns available at most fabric stores.

Custom Skateboards

Create a Skateboard! Our online design tool allows you to create a professional quality skateboard that ships to you in 24 hours! Zazzle skateboards feature locally sourced North American Maple decks. Our patent-pending printing process ensures a beautiful board with vibrant colors and professional quality standards. Start creating your board today and skate your creation tomorrow!

Source: Zazzle