Confession time. I’d started writing a piece on “Reverse Product Placement” last February with the intent of selling it the same way that Microsoft’s David Edery (via the Harvard Business Review) was selling his short article on the topic. Only my position, after reading about* his article and giving the idea some additional thought, was that his definition is flawed; that true reverse product placement was, as I recently described in another post, something else and what he was talking about was more like futures product placement. Here’s the relevant bit from that post (reLink): Continue reading →

Once upon a time, people didn’t believe in subdivision surfaces…

via CGTalk

I finally got around to watching a video enticingly titled “See how cool tech products are born: Where consumer products are designed” (Link). I went in with low expectations; and after the “Style”-centric introduction thought my skepticism would be justified. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. From the concept sketches and renderings to mention of “consumer encounters” research to design for efficient manufacturing, the video covers some nice ground in short order and is well worth taking the time to view.

In particular, I thought the juxtaposition between “printing” out parts and the discussion of developing a “widget application architecture” for a cell phone did a nice job of showing the unlikely convergence of physical and digital I’m often thinking about when posting topics here.

Enjoy.

Via a post on the Mass Custom website comes word of a pretty good article over on Design News, “Rapid Manufacturing’s Role in the Factory of the Future” (Link). Clips from the article:

With six machines, Morris has the world’s highest concentration of DMLS capacity. And he has been using those machines not just to make prototypes but also to turn out production parts.
… Continue reading →

I had originally intended to include news of the New York Public Library’s temporary installation of an Espresso book-on-demand machine (aka PerfectBook 040) in the post preceding this one, only this news really deserves its own entry. It’s not that print-on-demand is a new development. It’s that print-on-demand is a new development for so many people. Those who read Boing Boing and see it mentioned (Link) are probably already aware of such developments, but those reading The New York Times (Link) may not be aware to the same degree. And certainly average people just going to the library are probably much less aware. Add in television news coverage, and the enormity of the changes coming to not just book publishing but product manufacturing may finally register with the public.
Continue reading →