http://no-retro.com/home Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:20:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Unto This Last is a furniture studio and workshop, based on two sites in London. Its name comes from the title of a book by John Ruskin, published in 1862, in which he advocated a return to localised, craftsman/artisan workshops as an antidote to the conditions which industrialisation had imposed ... http://no-retro.com/home/2010/02/26/unto-this-last-local-craftsmanship-at-mass-production-prices/ I recently received a mail from Alex Mamalyha, web community manager for i.materialise, announcing the launch of a new service from Materialise NV. i.materialise is a rapid manufacturing service aimed at designers, and the beta site gives a good idea of the way the service will work. Obviously there are ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/11/07/materialise-launch-rapid-manufacturing-service-aimed-at-designers/ This post deals with the results and conclusion of the user trial discussed earlier. The findings of the study can be divided into two main areas: the results of the drawing exercise and the success of developing the drawings into a 3D CAD model, and the results of the two ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/11/01/from-configuration-to-design-capturing-the-intent-of-user-designers-part-2/ From Configuration to Design: Capturing the Intent of User Designers is the title of a paper I recently presented at MCPC 2009 in Helsinki. It details a user trial conducted as part of my PhD research, which sought to understand the extent to which non-professional user-designers are able to engage ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/10/30/from-configuration-to-design-part-1/ Day two of the conference started with a keynote by David Gross and Jeff Beaver of Zazzle, together with James Johnson of Avery Dennison. Zazzle and Avery have recently launched a collaborative effort, the first example of which allows consumers to customise and order ring binders in a minimum quantity ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/10/15/mcp-conference-2009-day-2/ The Mass Customisation and Personalisation conference here in Helsinki marks a couple of milestones for me. Firstly it means I'm a couple of years into the PhD, my progress in which is probably best characterised as 'fitful'. At times it's been racing ahead, but in the last few months it's ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/10/14/mcp-conference-2009-day-1/ "We, the people, the untrained majority, are the future of design. We have the tools and we will be the masters of our personal environments... We're not dumb consumers, we're creative consumers... We won't buy anything that isn't uniquely specified by ourselves." So begins an essay in July's edition of ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/07/01/icon-magazines-essay-on-fabbers-dabblers-and-microstars/ I recently got back from a trip to New York, having been there during ICFF and all the design week activities surrounding it. I was somewhat surprised at how little rapid manufactured furniture there was within the main show (unless you count laser cutting, which was impossible to avoid and ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/05/26/mgxs-e-volution-collection-shows-three-categories-of-exploration-of-design-for-rapid-manufacture/ If you're into the design of mobile phones, or high-end watches, there's a good chance you will have read about Ulysse Nardin's launch of a 'hybrid' cell phone recently. Developed in partnership with SCI Innovations, the Chairman is aimed at the luxury end of the market currently inhabited by Vertu ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/04/17/ulysse-nardin-chairman-cell-phone-by-matt-sinclair-design/ I'm kind of snowed under with work right now, both in terms of the PhD and my professional practice, so this post is heavy on images and light on text (it'll probably stay that way for the next couple of months, though if everything goes to plan I should have ... http://no-retro.com/home/2009/01/15/customise-this/