Good old Etsy is a massive market place for all things ‘hand made’. Now the concept of the hand can be stretched to the hand that operates the mouse, that designs the product, that clicks send, that, well, uses Ponoko..

Anyway, Soop is a London based design studio headed by top chef Wai-Lian Scannell. She’s forever rustling up new recipes in the Soop kitchen (literally). You can sample a few flavours in Soop’s Etsy shop. In this instance the result is super cute jewellery that can be combined (see customized) to make your very own farmyard scene on your finger.

And while at Etsy check out this, Object

What_
A geometric entity to occupy a desk, a shelf or any space in your life. Balances on several faces.
So the outer casing is made out of recycled cardboard coated in beeswax. The beeswax adds strength as well as a pleasant smell. The underside has two wells, both filled with a swatch of moss.
Why_
A stress reliever, something nice to look at and touch, or a little bit of the outside when you are stuck inside.

ok

Soop Found via Josh Spear

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The NottinghamTrent graduate show has produced some great lighting designs. The Curly Sue Spiral Desk Lamp by Wendy Tytherleigh is a distinctive desk lamp designed for the retail decorative market. The lamp features a collapsible spiral shade which allows the user to control the light level without the need for a dimmer switch (Via designzen).

Another really interesting light design is the Opal by Natalie Wilkins. It’s a portable wireless light (I assume it has a battery) made from bone china that can be placed on a table, held in the hand or suspended on the string provided. The translucent ceramic shell emits a warm glow similar to a candle.

The Hula ceiling light shade by Sarah Turner incorporates MIY/self assembly/mass customization. Sarah says that the shade embraces a new MIY (making it yourself) trend. The consumer arranges and assembles the rings in whatever form they wish so that each person can have a light of their own design.

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I happened across a new project to me while browsing the archives: Chumby was mentioned alongside Ponoko in an article in the New York Times back in November.

As the website says:

“The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, weather, celebrity gossip, webcams, sports scores — using your wireless internet connection”

The interesting thing to me is the extent of its open design: This section of their site is devoted to developers and offers resources for four areas of development: Hardware, software, widgets and crafts. The crafts page offers such delights as the patterns for the fabric elements of the housing, plus IGES files (that is, 3D CAD models) and engineering drawings for all the plastic moulded and metal parts used in the housing. Developers are encouraged and facilitated to modify the design as they wish. All you need is a 3D rapid prototyper! However there is some interesting discussion of more feasible options for creating your own casings on their forum here.

Interestingly, you don’t have to agree to anything to make use of the craft resources, but must click an agreement for access to their hardware (electronics) resources, such as schematics and PCB layouts. This agreement limits you from manufacturing and selling Chumby branded devices, but states; “Our goal is to give our Licensees latitude to modify their Chumby Devices and the Chumby software that runs on them, while preserving our business of running the Chumby Service”. Which seems fair enough.

Still, great opportunity here for any crafters/makers to get involved. Would be cool to see a laser cut variant!

Images from Chumbyfriends on Flickr

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Boingboingtv has a good video up in which Phil Torrone, editor of Make magazine, shows us some of his favourite projects from Maker Faire 2008 last weekend. These include soft toy electronics, ‘fablabs’ and the “brain machine”. Phil comments a little on the links between the maker movement, the affordablilty of digital fabrication, and the future of product personalisation.

Its good to get a little insight into the goings on at Maker Faire when I’m stuck over on this side of the atlantic - there’s such a vibrant network of makers out there, hopefully one day I’ll be able to attend a Maker faire myself!

Update:

There’s also an interesting perspective from the businessmen at Forbes.com here. Some chat with Make magazine, Bleep Labs and Mitch Altman on the reasoning behind DIY product success stories. The emphasis on the need for building a product community and sharing (and thus flexible licensing I surmise) is interesting.

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Nutre Arayavanish is a jeweller whose jewellery is informed by her interest in owner involvement.

She recently won the numbers of prestigious awards such as New Designer of the Year 2007 from the Business Design Center and Jewellery Designer of The Year 2007 (Student Category) from British Jewellers’ Assiciation (BJA). She explores the relationship between two-dimensional pattern and three-dimensional object, also the relationship between maker, jewellery and wearer in order to encourage the wearer to engage more with the piece apart from wearing them. The public perception or reaction to the jewellery when presented to them in different states of existence and brings new experience to wearers and viewers, and a new level of dimension to jewellery wearing.

Postable Jewellery is the spacial way of communication. It is a jewellery that can be send through mailbox, like a postcard. It is a flat-pack ring, assemble by slotting each components together. Presenting itself as a card and a gift, it can be a perfect present for any occasions.

available at magma books
What a perfect way to use Ponoko. By combining flat pack jewellery like this and laser etching you could design a business card that assembled into a piece of jewellery, what a great way to woo a potential client…..
Found via our buddy Josh Spear

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Mobile phones aren’t an area of great interest to me, but this Business Week article (via Core77) led me to an interesting slideshow: Responses to a Nokia design probe that went to Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra. Its a great testament to the value of co-design with users. And maybe a preview of how phones might look when we all have means of personal fabrication, and can have our customised dream phone. Nokia already have a site for enabling users to test drive beta versions of phone software: Nokia Beta Labs involves users in specifying and developing their phones’ software functions - it would be good to see a similar site allowing users and industrial designers to evolve physical phone design further from these probes.

One of my favourite responses is the phone that is also a water bottle, with the accompanying comment from its author: “It’s my style of phone because is helps you and others to survive. I would like to help others with my phone.” You don’t hear that in the UK …

There is, incidentally, a great quote in the Business Week article from a Nokia researcher, commenting on the use of a GPS program from their Beta Labs site; “People were misusing the application in creative ways.” Surely ‘misuse’ is a rather negative term when your users are doing such valuable work!

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Continuing an interview with artist Michael Kutschbach, I ask him about the concepts of digital rights management and copywrite issues raised on Ponoko

Q2. Would you be interested, as an artist in selling the right to use a 3D/2D CAD file instead of selling the physical artifact?
sure. i already do this in fact. in the past i have made a number of wallpaper works using plotted vinyl. these works are sold as an edition of three and the buyer buys the copyright to the work, not the physical work itself. there are strict instructions on placement and colour etc, and i recommend signwriters that i have worked with previously, but the owner can install the pattern as big as they want.


Q2a. Would you be concerned if a buyer modified the file to say, turn it into jewellery, a USB flash drive or a rug?

yeah, that would be wrong. i’ve nothing against commissions from galleries or collectors for specific projects but any alteration of an existing artwork outside of the rules or conditions i have placed on it would be a little offensive.
i like working on the border between art and design, i’m influenced a lot by what’s happening in the design and architecture worlds, but the context i show in is always a fine art context.
the idea of producing a modifiable artwork, ie something that asks the owner to complete the work in some way is in itself very interesting.
a year ago i made some sculptures out of felt that were in the shape of mobius strips. as they were soft ribbon-like forms, i left it up to the viewer or owner of the work to decide on how the form should be arranged, whether that be stretched out lengthways, rolled up tight, or whatever. but this thing always stays sculpture and didn’t work as anything else.

Part 3 coming soon

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It’s interesting how the indie design community respond so well to competitions: Clearly, we need briefs to flourish, we need constraints. The response to last month’s Ponoko competition is a case in point. So it’s no surprise that brands keep hurling them at us.
Doc Marten’s is one of the latest with their Freedm campaign, a website that allows you to decorate your own Doc Marten’s boot with the chance of having your design made up for sale (via Core77). This is one of many similarly enticing yet constrictive competitions in which getting your entry manufactured is still ultimately down to chance. At least customisation frameworks such as those offered by Nike, Etnies, and Timbuk2 guarantee some return on your investment of design time and effort, and some offer more freedom.

The cynical side of me sees these competitions as, at worst, simply an attempt by brands to get a lot of ideas for virtually no effort or cost. At best, they might be a means of gaining publicity by jumping on the DIY/open design bandwagon. But maybe they’re genuinely part of the movement and a necessary framework for indie designers to work within. However, if this is the case, it would still be nice to have more opportunity to recover some expenses than relying on the chance that one is going to win. How can we stop ourselves being exploited like this?

I suspect the answer is that these competitions and services are really aimed at facilitating design by the ‘non-designers’ discussed by Dave here. For more experienced designers, brand-led competitions such as the Muji design award, attract a great deal of interest, presumably because the briefs are so much wider open. Still, surely our time would be better spent directed towards projects that have more grassroots social impact, or that we at least have the means of building or marketing ourselves, such as those found on Thinkcycle? Sadly, this repository (and others) of collaborative, appropriate design, that offers the same reward of having one’s designs become reality, has been significantly less subscribed to.

It seems we relish constraints, while demanding a certain minimum of freedom, and the balance between these determines to what extent we are designers or ‘non-designers’. However, whichever we are, it seems that we are ultimately mostly interested in prestige.

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In an announcement that has shocked the various folding communities, researchers at USC Information Sciences Institute have invented a method of folding teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy containers made from polysilicon and gold film. Why is this interesting to Ponoko citizens? The folded shapes are produced from the labyrinthine-monikered process PolyMUMPs (Poly Multi User MEMS Processes) which, at it barest essentials, is an etching process to create very small custom shapes on sheets of material, usually silicon or gold foil. (more…)

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Now it may just be me, but when I see an option to turn kids sketches into a 3D stuffed toy, I think, ‘Do you reckon they would realize if I sent in a drawing of _ _ _ _ _ _ ?”

No, O.K.

Then following on from Indigo’s post on Xoddo

You can buy a Monster Design Kit for $249 (yes, I know) and they will send you the Make-My-Own-Monster Design Kit, that includes colored pencils, paper, and a detailed questionnaire. With this kit you create not only what the monster looks like, but you also create a story about the monster and describe his or her personality.
Once you’ve completed the kit and sent it in, the designers at North American Bear Co. will faithfully reproduce your design as a plush monster, including a descriptive hang-tag that tells the story of your monster as you have described it and identifies you as the creator.

Have you ever noticed that dogs look like their owners?

See any similarities here?

Or there is always Stuff Your Doodles
Stuff Your Doodles makes bespoke soft toys using a doodle as the design. It is recreated with recycled materials, stuffed and sent back to you. Prices start at £50.

Found via Trend Hunter

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