Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive

by Bas Van Abel (Editor), Lucas Evers (Editor), Roel Klaassen (Editor)

Open Design Now looks at design in the new networked world. Design is undergoing a revolution thanks to two forces: an emerging networked community that shares digital information about physical products and widely available production tools and facilities. Design is becoming an open discipline, in which ideas are shared and a wide range of products is being renewed in a worldwide collaborative process. Open Design empowers anybody and everybody to devise and distribute their own products, as it has happened in graphic design, music and film before. This book presents essays, case studies and a lexicon of images related to the main topics within Open Design. It offers the reader insight in this new arena of design, presents case studies and practical tools like licensing systems for design practitioners, design educators and design policy makers. The book is edited by Waag Society, Premsela Foundation and Creative Commons.

Genres: Design

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2011

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A multitude of articles - written by academics mostly centered around the industrial-design scene in the Netherlands - attempting definitions, describing challenges, opportunities and listing the tools, methodologies of the emerging field of Open Design. There is no consensus, especially in trying to define the field (what's included, what's not), and there is partially too much overlap in some of the articles (yes, the consumer turns into a pro-sumer, i get it now) but all in all the book, with its articles and additional short portraits, gives a great overview of the field (era 2011).

Joost Smiers thought experiment stood out to me, where he theorizes that a complete abolishment of copyright laws would lead to a negative-feedback controlled market that wouldn't allow any blockbusters, any bestsellers to emerge and therefore even out the market to a more localized, fair system that would feed all artists and designers equally.

One of the aspiring characteristics of Open Design - whether intentionally or not - is that it makes end-users (pro-sumers) assume more responsibility for their products/goods. And as we are facing scarcity of resources and nevertheless dispose of 50% of products within 3 months of buying (stats?), the books leaves one with the hope that the Open Design movement and all its cousins (Hacking, Recycling, Repairing, Sharing culture ..) might grip and help solve these problems.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview.