Manufacturing at home: How digital design is due for a shake up

First music, then film, books, and now design? Digital technology has shaking up the traditional creative industries. Design is the next sector due for change.

Album and single sales are in a long-run decline as consumers switch to downloads, sometimes illegally. Film has suffered the same way (although cinemas are still booming). ebooks outsold paperbacks on Amazon last year.

But up to now, design has always been safe. Could new technology threaten tradional design business models too?

“Printing a Stradivarius”

New three-dimensional printing techniques allows near perfect copies of existing items. And to create them, all you need is a decent computer and a 3D printer, which cost from €700 (and look rather boring - see our photo).

You can call up a blueprint on the computer, and the machine will either build up an object gradually by depositing material from a nozzle or selectively solidifying glue.

It can take a while to print, but eventually an object will emerge. At Ravensbourne College, our banner image, they tend towards creating new designs for students. These are often used for prototyping and testing out designs that are made later in more formal ways. This contoured map, left, was created there using this process.

And artists and designers are experimenting with the new media, as in this Crafts Council exhibition, Lab Craft.

But can we copy objects?

Product designers make money from selling the objects that they design - via a manufacturer. But if people can print their own products at home, where does that leave them?

One option is they will end up flogging designs like knitting patterns, but they can be replicated too. Instead of popping to the shops you can hop into the spare bedroom to print off the latest Alessi.

Another (unlikely) option is that progress will stall as people simply replace broken objects, or those they like, by scanning their dimensions in first. This is surely an easy way to avoid finding a product that matches.

Whereas music and film have seen a race to make money from the experience (live acts or the cinema), design could still fall back on the bespoke. Although it’s easy enough to copy a spatula or a knife rack, many designs have to be made specifically for a location or job.

But whatever, the design business model is likely to be shaken up. And as we know from film or music, there will be winners and losers. But in the long-run, we'll all benefit.