Open Design Now

Open Design Now is an comprehensive collection of articles and case studies about the people that are using the influential trend of what has been deemed ‘open design’.

It is about the past and future of things made by people allowing free distribution, documentation, permitted modifications and derivations of their work. It touches on DIY, hacking, networked societies, grassroots invention, downloadable designs and crowdsourcing. People that see the world as “something you can pry open, something you can tinker with.”

We dip in and out of this book on a regular basis, alongside an ever expanding list of essays on the Open Design website. Each article has a different take on aspects of the movement and trends. There are discussions about the future of factories and new types of consumers; to the future role of the designer and democratic shifts in production power. The book also cites case study products and infrastructures that will enable these shifts to come about.  

What's the best bit?

Our favourite essay is Libraries of the Peer Production Era by Peter Troxler, which maps how commons-based peer production systems work and analyses open source hardware and initiatives such as fablabs and make-spaces. We’ve even used it to help us understand and position where Make Works could sit in the future. We also love the Visual Index which cites examples of the trend from across the world.

Related

Opendesk

Open Design website