Header slide - Introduction Background Research FutureFactories Project Customisation Individualisation

Good morning / afternoon ladies and gentlemen

My name is Lionel T Dean I am a product artist

I position my practice between product design and an art with a bit of engineering thrown in.

I run a design practice call FutureFactories Studio which is focused exclusively on direct digital manufacturing and the creative use of digital design and manufacturing technologies. FutureFactories Studio has been working with 3D printing in art , craft and design for well over ten years now

Practice in three strands:-Commercial design consultancy and retail product designThe creation of art and gallery objectsAcademic research

FutureFactories began as blue skies academic research with the question ‘why not use AM for end use manufacture’

Because it is too slow, too expensive.

If, that is if we do like for like, same manufacturing/marketing culture but with more exotic shapes.

Exotic geometry is something of a dead-end route, unusual forms are only unusual for so long.

The question is what can we do differently

Mass manufacture is great, it has made high quality goods affordable to all of us.

But it comes with a compromise, its economics have been achieved through standardisation and uniformity

We all have to have the same

As we amass more and more ‘stuff’ we have become less and less happy with that compromise.

There is no tooling in digital Manufacturing, no moulds, no dies, just data, so why not make something slightly different each time so called mass-customisation.

Only, because I am precious as a designer and I don’t want the hoi palloi messing around with my beautiful work I prefer mass-individualisation. The difference with mass-individualisation is that the variation in design difference is automatically generated rather than specified by the consumer

Lampadina Mutanta, 2003 used to illustrate computational design and code driven meta-designsSLIDES + VIDEO CLIP

Tuber, 2003 used to illustrate animated meta-designs, the consumer interface and fixed length animation driven designsVIDEO CLIP

you can move, rotate and scaleEach operation about three axes = 9 parametersThen that is one of many circles that make up the designThis gives us a DNA code right of screen defining a particular instance of the meta-design

I wanted to harness the power of parametric to control virtual meta-designs that would change with every physical artefact produced

Very quickly, to set the scene, because I am sure you guys are familiar with 3D CAD

This is LM from my first collection in 2003.The Geometry is based on circlesEach circle exists in cartesian space

Now we have to think about how the meta-designs are driven

I wanted to harness the power of parametric CAD to control virtual meta-designs in real time meaning that it would be change its form for every physical artefact produced

You could have a designer on the production line tweaking the file each time but that would ties the designer to manufacturing and be more craft than design

I sought to automate the process through computational design linking parametric CAD and computer programming - This work began with fixed length animations. Tuber is an example of a fixed length animation. It is a two minute clip at 30 frames/second giving us 3,600 discreet design solutions. This is a lot but not the infinite variety my PhD study was aimed at.

How would a consumer or prosumer interact with meta designs?

The concept obviously lends it self to an online experience

I envisaged online boutiques that would be menageries of living designs

Holy Ghost, 2005 used to illustrate real time script driven designs. Discussion of building block versus morphing approaches.VIDEO CLIP

True individualisation with infinite variety was achieved through a computational design approach combining CAD with computer programming

The first fully scripted design was Holy Ghost. This was a UK arts council commission in 2005. Here the parametic CAD is driven by a custom written computer program

For me the trick of customisation is to achieve obvious differences between instances while maintaining a coherent design or brand identity.

Icon was produced as a culmination to my PhD thesis in 2008 to demonstrate just that. It was a batch of 100 individualised pieces which is pretty much industrial scale . Looking at these iterations I think you can see the differences but hopefully recognise the design at the same time.

Icon, 2008 used to prove the principle of mass individualisation. Discussion of brand identity versus differenceSLIDE SHOWREEL

Description of Holy Ghost and the computer script1. picking number of ‘buttons’2. positioning3. Uniform expansion4. non-uniform expansion5. Linking the buttons

Discussion of finishes

Discussion of finishes

SuperKitsch, 2010 used to illustrate co-creation. Discussion of the pros and cons of giving the consumer an active role in the creative processSLIDES + VIDEO CLIP

T-Rex vs The Gorilla, 2014 used to illustrate transmedia story telling and a cinematic approach to the design processSLIDES + VIDEO CLIP

Discuss pros, cons and my ambivalence toward co- creation

Discuss three levels of public engagement1. Social mead like/dislike influencing library content2. Social media suggestions - if something is popular we have to make it3. Public contributes models - file sharing

Discuss multi-platform work.borrowing workflows

Ojo, 2014 used to introduce the Precious, innovate UK work, DMLS 18k gold and the three customisation models explored within PreciousSLIDES

Orbis, 2015 used to illustrate online customisation toolsDiscussion of value and customer experienceSLIDES

HeartBeat, 2014 used to illustrate the power of consumer engagementVIDEO CLIP

Porphria, 2016 used to illustrate the latest work and future directionsVIDEO CLIP

Collect, 2015 used to illustrate co-creation model with direct designer-consumer dialogueSLIDES + VIDEO CLIP

The concept of retired jewelleryThe potential to encapsulate with powder bed processesStopping the process three times to encapsulate three charm elements

Orbis, 2015 used to illustrate online customisation toolsDiscussion of value and customer experienceSLIDES