Designing things is hard. Even as 3D printing and other technologies lower barriers to manufacturing it is actually quite difficult to design. What tools could make it easier for you to draw, design or specify the unique things you need and want? Below is a list of tools and trends that will help reduce the complexity and cost of design so that you can make whatever you think of.

1. Online design tools: Aviary is one of the companies pioneering free, easy to use online design tools. Their accessibility and low price points make them attractive use.
2. Open source tools: GIMP and Blender are two examples of open source tools that are giving the commercial players a run for their money. GIMP is an image editing suite and Blender a 3D modeling tool. As well as making tools available for free GIMP, Blender and Aviary all encourage commercial players to lower prices and explore other business models.
3. Online Customization Tools: FluidForms for example has its Cassius Lamp. Tools such as this are stand alone, creative, fun and easy ways to customize a design. They are limited in the degree of freedom but easy to use. Large corporates will turn to these tools initially when trying to explore co-creation and the simplification of design.
4. Design Frameworks: In programming you have frameworks that simplify the process of creating websites. Likewise design frameworks should emerge whereby you can easily manipulate and design using many pre-made forms. Instead of having to draw from scratch you can take a few things that look like what you want and manipulate them.
5. Data-Based Design: Tools such as the Streets earrings turn a data set into a design. Via this way you could input anything such as your birthday, your browser history, etc. and the tool could represent this design in a set way. Fun but limited uniqueness is a constraint.

   You could also use generative design whereby a program is written that has an algorithm and this produces a series of design choices. This manner of designing allows software engineers and data driven people into the design game. In a pure generative application a series of umbrellas will be produced and you can select your favorite or pick a different constraint.

   A related discipline – parametric design – works by understanding the geometric relationship between all the possible outcomes of the design. This is a handy method whereby one could let people determine the size of their object for example and the end result would be created automatically. All of these categories of tools are basically “systems that use math to design things” and allow data and algorithms to automatically determine a shape based on a data point.

6. Haptics: Haptics are tools that give you a sensation of physical feedback as you use them. Playstation controllers and game console steering wheels are haptics. Tools such as Anarkik3D combine software and a device to make 3D modeling much easier. By “feeling” where you are on the design, the manipulation of the 3D object becomes intuitive.
7. Computer games: Computer games already have sophisticated 3D environments. It’s a shame that it is hard to export this data to manufacturing tools. But, the reuse of the designs in the games and the level of aptitude that millions of people develop within a game make combining a computer game with manufacturing capacity a huge potential business opportunity. Just another way in which Spore was ahead of its time.
8. BAD, Brain Aided Design whereby your thoughts would be transformed into an object.
9. Hire a designer: ‘Hire a designer’ has been around for hundreds of years. But, the dialogue between the designer and the wannabe designer (wesigner, anyone?) has always been a stumbling block. What did the architect mean when she said your house was becoming too “Calatrava-y”? And what exactly do you mean when you want it to be more romantic? New tools and platforms are emerging to smooth over that dialogue.
10. Quiz based design: In quiz based design a series of questions, the more abstract the better, are asked of the customer. By matching those answers with data about the person and his/her experience a software tool will then design your object. This is the ultimate incarnation of Amazon’s recommendation engine and much work is being done towards recommendation, discovery and design aid tools. A relatively intelligent combination will be needed but if you look at what is possible now by tools such as 20 Questions headway is being made.

Joris Peels has a blog about 3D printing and the future of design called Voxelfab

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The Kickstarter Streets Earring are on their way! In March and April we ran a campaign on Kickstarter.com to raise funds to make the first batch of Streets Earrings.

They turned out even better than we expected and we are really chuffed!

Check out what the maps, the preview images from the design interface and the final earrings themselves look like.

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Now that the dust has settled from Lendwerbel, here are some impressions of our public breakfast, “Permalend Breakfast”. Permalend Breakfast is an event, part of Lendwirbel, in which people grab some tables and chairs and enjoy breakfast in a public space. We chose “The Square With No Name” opposite the Fluid Forms studio. Dining with Hannes and I were Christoph Steinbauer, Kristof and the Mail Man.

The charmingly weird Karin of Lupi Spuma poped by to have her photo taken with the work of one of her favorite graffiti artist.

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On Friday at the opening of the Graz Design Month (German) I met the chaps from Breaded Escalope. Like us, these guys are trying to engage people in the creation process. They call their work design performances. One such product/performance of theirs, the Original Stool, is demonstrated in the video. The project demystifies the production of a plastic stool. The mold inside the ball is flexible and wobbles around as the ball is moved. This process continues over 45 min until the resin has set.

A certain unpredictability is brought to the resulting form. This makes the form a direct result of the interaction that occurred during the setting process. They also have a number of other very interesting projects so check them out at… http://www.breadedescalope.com/

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We have made ourselves a few prototypes of some Gold Plated Streets Earrings. We are now confident that we can iron out all problems that will emerge in the next few prototypes that we make. We have found some great craftspeople to help us make them. Now all we need is a positive response from you guys so we can make the first batch.

Instead of developing the earrings first and then checking with you guys, we are doing thing differently this time. You now have to power to decide the fate of our Streets Earrings concept. If you don’t like them, take a look at some of our other products, perhaps you can find something that tickles your fancy. If you do like them and want to lend us your support, pop over to our Kickstarter Project Page and pledge for us. Depending on the size of your pledge we are offering different rewards.

Once the funding time is over, we will supply you with a method to define the section that you want as Streets Earrings, we will make them and then send them to you.

“What is Kickstarter?” you ask. Kickstarter is a platform that helps creative people like us, start projects without the risk of having to invest lots of money up front. A kickstarter project is put up for a funding period in which interested people pledge money to support the project. In return they get a range of rewards defined by the artist/designer. Projects range from art and music to design and even an open source Jaquard Loom.

In order to really understand just head over there and please consider supporting our Streets Earrings project.

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Andy: What was your motivation to create objects out of street maps?  What inspired you?

John Briscella

John: In the past few years, I have been living in different cities around the world and started to have different emotions for each one. I am originally from Philadelphia, but was living mainly in Vienna, Austria, and my favorite city at the moment is Tokyo. One of my favorite things to do within a new city is to walk around without a map, try to get lost, and then if I make it back, chart out on a map the path I was going. Sometimes I miss alot about the city and sometimes I happen to find interesting areas, its all relative, but I try not to make the same path twice.
The clocks were an idea from these explorations, as well as some of my other projects, that begun to connect the formal aspects of the street network and their inherent qualities of the space.

Andy: How did you find Fluid Forms and how did things start?

John: While in Vienna, I happened to see the Fluid Forms Earth Bowl Design at a friend’s gallery shop. The concept was interesting and similar to my ideas about place. After taking a look at their complete works, I noticed I had similar works that might be interesting to them and sent them a email about my thoughts. Stephen wrote me back mentioning he had saw my Urban Gridded Notebook at the Kunsthaus in Graz, while looking for a gift.  From then on, we were having discussions about collaborating on new products.

Andy: What was the best / hardest thing to do in this project?

Urban Grided Notebook

John: Working with Stephen is really cool. We have been talking about techniques and he is able to see where the potential is to develop into a Fluid Forms concept. The hardest part of the project is to find the correct associations between the objects, the street network, usability, and production method. Its a delicate mixture.

more about John on his blog
more about the Urban Grided Notebook
buy the Urban Grided Notebook on Walking-Things.com

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After the success of our Earth product series we naturally learned a lot about what is emotionally important to people. Among other things people associate feelings and memories with places. I seemed natural to us to build upon the idea of the Earth series using street maps. We had to overcome a number of hurdles to accomplish the result you can see today.

Streets Clock in Maple Wood

Proprietary Data

The map interfaces most people are accustomed to using like those from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! use proprietary data. This means that we can’t create any derivative works from them. This is where the OpenStreetMap comes in. The OpenStreetMap is licensed under a Creative Commons license that enables us to take and remix the data. OpenStreetMap does not yet contain every street, building and point of interest but anyone can enter data into the system. Please consider entering some data from you local area. Find out how.

Streets Clock Design Interface

Non-Realtime Data Access

Due to the large amount of data in the OpenStreetMap we can not retrieve the data in real-time. The solution we came up with was to perform some image processing of the pre-rendered map images. We cut out certain aspects of the map based on their color. This enables visitors to our website to get a preview of how their clock will look in real-time.

Production Files

The laser cutter that cuts the final clock shape out of wood or acrylic glass needs a vector file. A vector file is defined by lines and curves whereas a bitmap file, like in the real-time preview, is defined by the colors of the files pixels. The vector file can be scaled but the bitmap file can not. Whilst the preview might look fine on the screen, it is not suitable for laser cutting at the scale of the clock. Each pixel would be visible and the curves would never be as smooth as with the vector files. When generating the vector file we also remove pieces of information that are not necessary such as street names, transport routes and administrative district borders. This creates a more iconographic image. In future we may look at offering the engraving of street names on the streets. At present this is not automated and can not be offered for one-off pieces. For large orders we can look at manual customization of the geometry and engraving. To produce the final production file a designer, either myself or Hannes, turns certain layers on or off to produce a result that reaches our aesthetic standards and contains the most relevant information in geometric form.

Complexity and Laser Speed
The more complex a form the longer it takes to cut out the clock. Our laser cutter is very fast and powerful and allows us to keep production of unique pieces down to an affordable price whilst producing a beautiful end result.

What is Next
It is too early for me to say what the future has in store for the Streets concept but give the amazing initial response you can be assured there are more products to come. Please send us you feedback, both good and bad, so that we can keep improving the Streets products and design interfaces to make them as simple and elegant as possible.

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What? The last article was written back in October? Uff, we must have been pretty busy during the last few weeks…

Yes it’s quite obvious that our small team’s resources where occupied to push Fluid Forms further and further.
So what was going on the last weeks: Material tests, prototyping, creating a new design-your-own product, backend-improvements and an online jewelry design competition on Facebook.

But first things first!

Material Tests and prototyping:

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We played a lot around with different materials (metals, acrylic, wood) and production methods (photo etching, laser cutting, metal 3d-printing). And the outcome? Some very very secret prototypes and the Streets Clock which we launched a few days ago.

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Streets Clock ~ Your Favorite City as a Personalized Wall Clock:

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You can design the Streets Clock yourself by entering the name of a city (perhaps downtown New York) and dragging it’s map to a preferred section.
The custom wall clock is the first Fluid Form we have co-developed with an external designer. John Briscella who we will introduce next time was doing a great job painfully collected the first metropolitan area data-sets…We think the outcome is an eclectic and stylish wall clock making a perfect present under everyone’s Christmas Tree!

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Speaking of Co-Development: Fluid Forms Online Jewelry Design Competition:

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November also saw the 1. Fluid Forms Online Design Competition on Facebook. We invited 6 Designers from Graz to participate in a first instructive (Facebook can be a bit tricky…) yet pretty cool jewelry design competition.

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The Designers submitted 22 Designs of which 2 stand out:

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1. THE WINNER (46 votes):  Tobias Schneider‘s aka Famepix’ “Sound Wave II”:

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2. THE RUNNER UP (29 votes)  – En Garde‘s  “iPod Sound Blaster”:

The winning design will be prepared now for the launch on fluid-forms.com. More t.b.a

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CONGRATS ONCE AGAIN TO THE WINNER, TOBIAS SCHNEIDER AND OUR COMMUNITY FOR SUPPORTING THE DESIGNERS WITH THEIR VOTES!

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milkorsugar, a platform that showcases everything you can customize and order online, has recently opened its doors. The Dutch website calls itself the web’s first Customization Portal which is in my opinion not to 100 % true. Just visit egoo.de to see what I mean. But anyway…

What I really like on milkorsugar is the short key fact description (i.e. delivery, price range) of each reviewed customization offer. And not to forget the obligatory community-product-rating.

I can’t wait to see the next features in action they announce on their website : comparison of products, visual shopping and pic upload of things customized by consumers.

My finding on milkorsugar today: Viesso – Online Furniture Configuration

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The MCPC // 2009, the 5th World Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization is on now.  We had been invited by the conference organization board to present Fluid Forms in Helsinki. But unfortunately we have been hyper-busy these days here in Austria and hence couldn’t make it to visit the MCPC…But none the less I will try to provide you with some MCPC content during the next week.

On the first day, Joseph Pine, the brilliant mass customization visionary, presented on the MCPC 2009 his ideas about the “Future of Mass Customization”.

He seas the future of user co-creation concentrated in 4 main threads:

(Read a detailed description of the 4 threads on Frank Piller’s Mass Customization Blog)

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1. From mass customization to continuous innovation:
Pine says that in order to build a sustainable mass customization business, mass customization has to be connected with user co-creation tools that continuously work on the solution space (or design space as we call it at Fluid Forms) of the mass customization offering.

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2.From markets of one to “one of markets”:
Mass Customization will not only focus on serving the needs of one single person (markets of one) but will also manage the bundeling (matching) of a single customer’s needs depending on different contexts (e.g. you traveling alone and you traveling with your family – different context, different personalized needs) -> “one of markets”

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3. From reality to virtual reality:
We will use virtual reality more often to personalize the self in a virtual world.
Does this mean we will see more (un)successful Second Lives?

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4.From Mass Customization of offerings to Mass Customization of management
Pine suggests to take the knowledge and tools of mass customization and introduce them into business management -> the mass customization of business management.

My personal opinion? I am not quite sure if there was really so much groundbreaking stuff to learn during the speech of Pine. Due to the fact that I wasn’t listening to the speech I don’t really have an idea what Pine exactly tries to say in Thread 2 and how the realization of Thread 4 will look like…so I am looking forward to learn more

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