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DesignDirectHow to start your own micro brand

Roger Ball with Heidi OverhillForeword by John Heskett


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Copyright 2012 Roger Ball and Heidi OverhillTe moral right o the authors have been asserted

All rights reservedNo part o this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any orm by any means, without the prior permission in writing othe publisher.

ISBN 978-988-15831-1-6

DesignDirectSchool o Design

Te Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom, Kowloon

Hong Kong

Published by P eCPrinted and bound in Hong Kong

Visit us at:

www.designdirect.com.hk


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DesignDirectHow to start your own micro brand

Roger Ball with Heidi OverhillForeword by John Heskett


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Acknowledgements

Te authors would like to thank Dr. Lorraine Justice or her early champion-ing o the concept o DesignDirect both as a course and as a book. Tanksalso to Dr. Ernesto Spicciolato or brilliant co-teaching and the sharpest eyein product design, and to the many others at Te Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity who also contributed unwavering support never orgetting thestudents whose energy, drive and enthusiasm gave li e to this idea in the

rst place.

Our inde atigable editor, Signe Hoffos, purged our prose o many o its moreegregious errors. Janis sui was the per ect assistant, who solved so manydifferent problems in so many different ways that there is no space to listthem all. Any errors remaining in the text are despite their best efforts on ourbehal . Te book itsel could not have happened without the DesignDirectentrepreneurs who generously took time to share their stories thank-youArnault Castel, Bernat Cuni, David Ericsson, Cory Kidd, Elaine Young andMichael Young.

And, most o all, we would like to thank our amily members or theirgreat patience with all the rantic late night typing thank you Alan, Kiera,Neisha, Nora, and most o all, Yaling.


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Foreword

With the rise o successive waves o industrialization there has been a serieso undamental changes in concepts o how design is understood and prac-ticed. Consider, or example, the shif beginning in the seventeenth centurythat brought the gentlemanly pro ession o architecture into being out othe age-old traditions o craf builders. Te latter were not eradicated, butevolved in their own groove, and it is true that a majority o buildings arestill constructed by them without the intervention o architects. A paralleldevelopment was the emergence o naval architects rom shipwrights.

Another phase o development came with the general spread o industrial-ization based on steam power, when the only people who could be oundto design the orms o the vast array o products that poured out o acto-ries were engineers who were responsible or the unctional per ormanceo capital goods such as transportation vehicles or military armaments, andartists, whose talent or drawing super cial orm gave products a decorative veneer, although their designs usually required the skills o draughtsmenbe ore they could be converted to a production speci cation.

Tere ollowed at the end o the nineteenth century a new orm o powerwith the rapid spread o electri cation, which provided the basis or a newrevolution in industry with the dominance o mass production in the USAby around 1920. Te pre x mass came to dominate the twentieth century,as in mass media, mass communications, mass market, mass advertising,mass consumption, mass education and mass transportation, to name some


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o the most prominent. Te major characteristics o mass production thatunderpinned all these other mani estations were that it was large-scale, re-quiring heavy investment, and was very in exible. ooling-up or a newproduct could take as much as six months. It depended upon standardiza-tion and a high degree o division o labour in order to produce large quanti-ties o low-cost products. Tis created a problem: how could the long-termin exibility o mass production be reconciled with the marketing need or variety and stimulation o demand by regular changes o orm? Te answerwas provided by Al red P. Sloan, head o General Motors, who was the origi-nator o the concept o design as styling. Tis meant regular annual modelchanges in which the super cial orm o automobiles was changed, whilethe mechanical and electrical components within the package remainedconstant over long periods. Te costs o styling changes were deemed ac-ceptable or the stimulus they brought to advertising and marketing. Styling

as the dominant design technique rapidly spread to other consumer prod-ucts and, indeed, is still very widespread in many industries.

Te dominance o mass, however, is being undermined by a new phase ochange in our time and, in particular, the spread o in ormation technologyand exible manu acturing. Tese have broken down the need or large scaleand provided a rapid means o modi ying production lines to adapt to nichemarkets. Small is not only beauti ul, as Eugene Schumacher proclaimed, itcan also be pro table on the basis o customization and meeting the speci cneeds o small groups and even o individuals without imposing the uni or-mity o standardization. Yet mass production is not under threat in someways it is being transmuted into what can be called super mass production,with giant corporations regarding the world as their oyster. Tey are notgoing unchallenged, however, as the many current variants demonstrate. Itis in the context o Asia in the last three decades that modi cations o massproduction have taken many other orms. One o the most interesting is thatsome designers, who by various means have gained extensive experiencein the new industrial paradigms, have come to combine their design skillswith entrepreneurial insights and so open up new possibilities o meet-ing the needs o individuals, rather than con orming to the needs o largemass producers.


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In this book, Roger Ball and Heidi Overhill explore the emergence o designentrepreneurship in Hong Kong and particularly at the School o Design atTe Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Tey bring a depth o experience opractice and education to bear, with a rich spectrum o examples, on one othe most interesting o the many trans ormations sweeping across the worldo design in our time.

John Heskett

Dean, School o Design, Te Hong Kong Polytechnic University October, 2011


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Contents

Acknowledgements v Foreword viiIntroduction xv

One: Design: Direct from the Designer to the ConsumerTe traditional model: Mass production 1Te model changes: Te rise o Asia 3

New: Digital manu acturing 4New: Te long tail 8New: Diversi ed advertising 9New: Disintermediation 10End result: DesignDirect 11

wo: Why are there no designers who are CEOs?SizeChina 14Te Business o Design Week 16Gala dinner at BODW 17Designers in the boardroom 18

Tree: Design EducationDesign and the Industrial Revolution 22Te Bauhaus and geometry 23American design and advertising 26Design and the digital revolution 27Design education or pro essional practice 28Employment in-house 29


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Consulting 30Manu acture it yoursel 31Design thinking 31Emerging models 32Planting a orest 34DesignDirect 35

Four: First Day of ClassWorking in teams 38Surprise and ailure 40Slide show 42est by Internet 43

New opportunities 45

Five: Branding Te pre-history o branding 47Branding meets packaging 49Product skinning 52Mass media and shopping 52In ormation, ast 54Universal branding 54Brand management 56Design planning 58No logo? 59

Sel branding in the age o the Internet 60Pitching your brand 61

Six: Guest Lecturers Come to ClassVisiting experts 64David Ericsson o VOID Watches 66Michael Young and the PXR-6 68Bernat Cuni o SDWorks 71Arnault Castel o Kapok 74Elaine Young o LAByrinth 76Cory Kidd o Intuitive Automata 78

Seven: Te InternetComputers, the Internet and the World Wide Web 84Searching the Web 85Blogs 87Web sales 90Filters 92


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Eight: Student AssignmentsBrand pro le 96Business proposition 98Public speaking 100Visuals 100Brand name 102Strategy 105Web site 106Web search optimization 107

Nine: Intellectual Property Te value o mass produced ideas 111Intellectual property protection 114Copyright 115Patents 117

rademarks 119Design right and registration 120Te value o protection 121Employment and intellectual property 123Problems with intellectual property 126Future intellectual property 130

en: Class CritiqueProduct 131

Prototype 133

Eleven: Entrepreneurs and RetailersTe cost o ailure 140Hard choices 141Year One 141Choose 142Tink small 143Unlimited Edition 143DesignDirect goes to market 144Case Study 147

welve: Last Day of ClassFeedback 158Looking orward 159


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Tirteen: A Place to StandTe new eld o design opportunity 162Rise o Chinese micro-brands 162New categories: Increased complexities 163

Endnotes 165Index 191About the authors 197Photo and Design Credits 199


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Introduction

I have been waiting or DesignDirect all my li e. For thirty years I have beenimmersed in the world o design, as a student, staff designer, design consul-tant, instructor, and brand creator. Everything I learned to question duringthat time seems now to have been leading all along straight towards the ideao DesignDirect.

My rst job out o design school was with Cooper Canada. A amily-ownedsporting goods business located in oronto, it was the number one icehockey brand in the world. Product passion permeated the company at ev-ery level. Tis was not marketing hype or a cutesy back-story concocted bybranding pro essionals. It was visceral; everyone in the company believedin the product they were making, and their mission as a company. In thosedays be ore Asian sourcing, each one o the hundreds o products was madeon the premises by an army o Portuguese and Maltese matrons devoted todoing a good job. From the vantage point o my office just beside the actory

oor, I saw the pride and ingenuity they put into every Cooper product.

Cooper had a ull test lab on site, plus a comprehensive plastic and oammolding operation, a leather nishing acility, and every type o sewingmachine imaginable (plus a ew beyond imagination). Tey invested theirpro ts back into the rm to buy new technologies and nurture new ideas.Teir 20-person in-house design staff was by ar the largest in Canada ora company that size. I stood dumb ounded be ore their rst German com-puter-controlled laser-cutting machine, bought to replace the thousands o


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steel abric-cutting dies. No one at school had ever mentioned such a thing.Cooper was way ahead o the curve.

During my last year with the company, 1985, the ageing amily managersrecruited resh blood to move their proud business orward. Te new presi-dent was a slick MBA who in public promised a new era o stupendousgrowth and in private smirked at quaint old Cooper ways. He did whatMBAs are trained to do. He sold the company at a pro t to other charlatans.Within ve years the Cooper brand was no more, a casualty o neglect andincompetence. In many ways, this has been the history o North Americanmanu acturing or the past generation, with the same mistakes repeatedagain and again. Standing helpless on the sidelines watching that debacle,I learned my rst lesson that would ultimately lead to DesignDirect. Once product passion disappears from a companys leadership the brand wont

long survive.

I moved on to become CEO o the consulting rm Paradox Design. Overthe next 18 years, I designed products that ound runaway success and cre-ated new brands, helping my clients to earn millions o dollars or them-selves while I earned my hourly consulting ee. I had reached my secondDesignDirect moment. Good design is worth money, but designers dont usu-ally get a share.

I tried to get a share. I negotiated royalty agreements, designed productson spec, patented ideas, and went so ar as to get one product idea tooled,selling a modest number. As my experience grew, I realized that standardmethods o commercial product distribution made it next to impossible ora solo designer to succeed in manu acturing a good idea.

One day, a young designer who had lef Paradox a ew months earlier calledme up or lunch. I was impressed to see his new car and cool clothes; he hadobviously come a long way in a short time. I asked him what he was doing.He said he had started his own business selling car parts. Car parts?

You remember my old Suzuki? he asked.

How could I orget! We had teased him unmerci ully about that rusted-out wreck.

Exactly, he agreed. He didnt like his rusty enders much either, and becausehe couldnt afford a new car, he eventually got so ed up that he had some re-placement enders made at a riends shop. People noticed them, and asked


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where they could buy some too. So he had ten sets made up, and listed themon eBay. And in only a ew months hed sold enough enders to replace theentire Suzuki, and was branching out with other parts. My jaw dropped. Teold business model for product distribution was changing.

Around that time, one o my best clients asked or a routine bid on the de-sign o a new helmet. As always, our quote included the our stages o con-cept, development, tooling, and testing. Tere was no response, and a ewmonths later I spied a brand new helmet in their trade show booth. Suspect-ing that the job might have been scooped up by a rival, I asked cautiously,where did that come rom?

Oh, we OEMd that helmet rom our Asian manu acturer, was the casualanswer. My client had ound a suitable helmet that was ready to buy right

off-the-shel rom their overseas Original Equipment Manu acturer. Teyhad spent nothing at all on design and development. Tere was no way Icould compete against that price. Te cost of Asian product development was plunging fast.

Troughout these years, I continued to teach design part-time, mainly at theOntario College o Art and Design (OCAD). For example, in 1987, I hadlaunched a new studio class titled Design or Social Needs that ocused onsustainability, ageing, and inclusive design. In 1987, that was exciting stuff,

but twenty- ve years later I saw the same issues still being pitched as thenew direction or design. Te real world o design might be revolutionizingunder Asian sourcing, new technology, and the Internet, but design educa-tion as ar as I could see was still just re-packaging the same old principlesId learned when I was a student. It wasnt enough. We needed new designcareer options.

I needed a new career option. I was eeling lost; unsure o my way. Tere wasno way to go back design was my li e. But I needed time to move orward to think, and to re-invent mysel . I sold everything and moved to Italy,completing a Masters degree at the Domus Academy in 2002; and then, in2004, I moved to Hong Kong. Tere, I ound mysel with a birds eye viewright down into the heart o scary Asian sourcing and new technology. I wasplunged into an exciting mash-up where everything was possible. And as Imet people, visited actories, and soaked up the sheer energy o the city, myanxieties about the uture o design didnt grow they began to all away. Ibegan to see that the changes wrought by technology all the short cuts andnew ideas rom the Internet, and the low costs or manu acturing were notproblems at all. Tey were, o course, opportunities, and not just that, it was


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designers who stood to gain the most rom those opportunities. All that wasrequired was a re-set o approach. DesignDirect is that re-set. Tis isnt theend o something old its the start o something new.

Roger Ball

Pro essor, School o Design, Te Hong Kong Polytechnic University February, 2012


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One

Design: Direct rom the Designer to the Consumer

Small bands o visionary designers in Hong Kong and Shenzhen are chang-ing the ace o branding and design and making good money, too. Out-sourcing the physical production o their ideas directly to low-cost Asiansuppliers, and using the Internet to sell directly to consumers, theseDesignDirect entrepreneurs have bypassed traditional corporations to cre-ate their own personal micro brands.

Tey are not alone. Around the world, creative innovators o every kind areexploiting new commercial opportunities afforded by the Internet. Capi-talizing on the rise o social networking, on-line shopping and low-scaleproduction or niche marketing, they have created an entirely new vision owhat it means to be a designer or an entrepreneur and o what it meansto develop and manage a brand.

Te traditional model: Mass production

In the past, most product designers have worked or corporations, orone simple reason: only large companies have the staggering amounts ocapital required to get conventional mass-produced consumer goods intothe market.

Consumer product development as we know it can be ridiculously expen-sive. Development costs or a relatively simple item like a bicycle helmet canrun to over hal a million dollars. Te cost o researching and re ning thedesign is only the beginning. Setting up traditional production equipmentrequires a huge investment in custom tooling or elements using injection-

molded plastics or deep-drawn steel.


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Mass-production acilities tend to be both complex and rigid. Tey de-mand skill, time and money to set up, and once established can only turnout a limited range o products, or even just one. Teir overwhelming ad- vantage is that, once up and running, they can efficiently churn out thatproduct in abundance, amply repaying the initial investment i the itemsells well. Te very rst injection-molded plastic lawn chair to come off the production line might nominally cost $200,000, but the second costs90 cents, and by the time the millionth chair is produced, set-up costs havebecome insigni cant.

And, o course, or every dollar spent on production, at least twice thatmuch must go into marketing and promotion to in orm consumers that theproduct is available, and persuade them to buy it.

In design terms, this means that the rst chair must be per ect, because thecost o ailure can have devastating effects. Scrupulous research, planningand testing are an essential part o the development process or, at least,they should be. At the same time, anything produced in huge quantitiesneeds to attract a wide audience. Tere are always exceptions passing ads,success ul innovations, the occasional lucky maverick but the high stakesin mass production encourage manu acturers to play it sa e, and aim ormass-market sales.

Even so, only a small percentage o products ever become commerciallysuccess ul. In 2005, the director o public affairs or the US Patent Officestated in an interview that o the 1.5 million patents in effect in America,only 3,000 were nancially viable; i true, this would translate as a successrate o 0.2% i all those patents applied to commercial products. O course,patents cover all kinds o things, including many o the vital componentsthat make other products possible. But despite the high risks involved, thetantalizing prospect o mass-market sales keeps the whole apparatus rolling.

Te sheer scale o investment required or mass production means that agreat many consumer goods are only made by companies with the resources material and human to support the whole process rom research anddevelopment to marketing and ul llment. However good your idea and nomatter how strong your business plan and sales pitch, this is not the kind ocollateral money that a creative start-up can borrow. Tus, designers whowant to create mass-market consumer products are generally compelled towork or the kind o corporate clients who can make large investments inpursuit o large returns.


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When the clients themselves are creative, and play an active part in develop-ing new ideas, this model can work well. Some o the great moments in 20thcentury design Scandinavian style o the 1950s and 60s, the sophisticationo Italy in the 1960s and 70s were distinguished by the inspired partner-ships o gifed designers and visionary clients. apio Wirkkala ound oppor-tunities with the astonishing Iittala glass company; Ettore Sottsass Jr. honedhis skills under the mentorship o Olivetti and Alessi both amily-owned

rms with the kind o business oresight that spans generations.

Client interest in the creative process, coupled with a long-term approach todesign and branding, stands in stark contrast to the demand or high returnson short investment cycles which distinguishes much o the market today.When a company is managed by pro essional MBAs without product pas-sion, R&D is ofen the rst casualty. But when the company belongs to the

designer, research and development is the heart o the business.

British author Matt Ridley, author o Te Rational Optimist: How Prosper-ity Evolves (2010), even suggests that the golden age o big business may bepassing. He predicts a uture in which nimbler small companies will takethe economic lead: As islands o top-down planning in a bottom-up sea,big companies have less and less o a uture (the smaller the scale the betterplanning works) Te size o the average American company is down rom25 employees to 10 in just 25 years. Te market economy is evolving a new

orm in which even to speak about the power o corporations is to miss thepoint. Ridley argues that exible collaboration between light- ooted andast-moving small companies represents the uture.

Te model changes: Te rise of Asia

In the 1990s, a sea change swept over the industrial world as Asia emergedas a center or tool-making and manu acturing. ool-making had tradition-ally been a specialized trade, dominated by a cadre o elite, local, unionized

workers. It was both expensive and time-consuming. Te precision tool re-quired to make an injection-molded plastic part might take 20 or 30 weeksto build, with a single dedicated tool-and-die maker painstakingly crafingit piece by piece, usually within a strictly regulated working day. Te scar-city o such skilled workers, and the high cost o their equipment, kept theindustry exclusive: there were just not that many tooling shops accessible tonew product developers, and there was certainly no room or bargaining.

In the early 1990s, Korean suppliers saw an opportunity to undercut West-ern tool-makers, and reduce delivery time. Paying modest wages to shif


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workers who kept the shop open around the clock, they could deliver high-quality tools in a third o the time and hal the price o their Western com-petitors, even with the cost o overseas delivery. With the emergence o Chi-na as an even lower-cost competitor, tooling prices plummeted. Suddenly,there were thousands o tooling shops eager or business.

oday, tooling and plastic parts suppliers are just an email away rom anydesigner keen to experiment. Tey can be ound directly online or sourcedthrough Web-based directories such as Alibaba. Small production runs,once an option only or large manu acturers, are now within reach o any-one with a CAD le and a credit card.

New: Digital manufacturing

As the 21st century opens, mass production is no longer the only way to geta consumer product to the market. Emerging digital technologies have ur-ther enhanced the process, and reduced the cost o designing and makingnew products. Some even offer radically new ways o combining materialsin a single product and a single manu acturing process.

In the early 1980s, AutoCAD began to liberate designers rom their relianceon drafing by hand. As desktop drawing tools evolved, it became ever asterand easier to generate and revise new product ideas. Digital les simulating

every detail o the shape, colour and texture o the nished product couldbe rendered with photographic clarity, making it easier than ever be ore toreview and assess new ideas in the design stage.

At the same time, complementary technology was rapidly developing digitalscanning systems or three-dimensional objects that could record minutesur ace detail. Manu acturing and medicine worked in tandem to developscanners and probes that could create templates or a hip replacement, orcompare a nished machine part with its original design.

Te next challenge was to move rom design into production. As early as1959, researchers at MI carved an ashtray with a computer-operated mill-ing machine. Such subtractive manu acturing systems are little different

rom conventional hand- abricating techniques, such as carving an objectrom a piece o wood, or ashioning a tool rom a sheet o metal. Using

laser-cutters, water-jet cutters and ve-axis CNC milling machines, com-puter-operated systems are simply aster and more accurate than traditionalmethods. Tese new technologies with their ast set-up times and reason-able costs are ideally suited to small-scale production runs.


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Chuck Hulls invention o stereolithography (SL or SLA) in 1986 took a di -erent approach. Tis additive method built up objects in layers, creating a

stack o wa er-thin slices to produce a three-dimensional orm. Inside therst stereolithography machines, an ultraviolet laser used the outline o

each slice onto a thin layer o photosensitive liquid polymer, converting theliquid to a solid. Te rst layer mounted to a plat orm, which dropped bytiny increments, allowing resh layers to build upon those below. When the

nished model was lifed rom the vat, excess liquid drained away, revealingthe physical orm.

Early models were ofen quite crude, but some designers immediately rec-ognized the potential o the new technology. Janne Kyttanen, ounder o theFreedom o Creation (FOC) in Helsinki, created early lighting designs that

eatured complex and delicate undercut geometry that could not have been

made any other way, by hand or by machine.

Newer methods use the same principle to print orms in successive layers.Additionally, designers realized that additive printing could produce hingesand other small moving parts, ully assembled, in a single pass. In 2006,Patrick Jouin created the nylon One Shot Stool, which emerged rom itsproduction chamber urled like an umbrella, and then opened to ull size onintegral printed hinges. In 2009, MI researcher Peter Schmidt printed anentire working clock.

Current developments in 3D printing have widened the scope so that manysuch rapid prototyping systems can now handle the same range o materialsas conventional manu acturing. Some printers use a kind o hot glue gun totrace out successive layers o thermoplastic; others (like the One Shot Stool)employ Selective Laser Sintering to use powdered plastics and metals intosolid orms. Relatively inexpensive machines rom Z Corporation use stan-dard ink-jet printing heads to squirt liquid onto successive layers o dry cornstarch; afer the model hardens, the excess dust can be brushed away, and, ithe printing heads are loaded with ink, the item can be in colour. It is evenpossible to print ceramics and glass, assembling a orm rom powder thatcan then be red in a kiln. Mark Ganter, o the University o Washington,claims that i we could get a material into powder orm at about 20 micronswe could print just about anything.

3D printing supports combinations o materials unprecedented in conven-tional manu acturing. Some machines can print different types o plastic atthe same time to create, or example, a box with hard plastic sides and a

exible plastic hinge, all in one pass. Laser-sintered metals can be used into


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lattice structures that carry as much strength as a solid orm, but use lessmaterial, and weigh less. British manu acturer Filton uses 3D printing tomake commercial titanium components or aircraf landing gear, in a ormthat could not be achieved any other way.

Increasingly, 3D printed orms are creating nished products in their ownright (plate 2). Inevitably, as the quality and versatility o the technology im-proves, the cost is dropping. Already, small plastic parts such as buckles canbe digitally printed at prices that rival those o injection molding.

Tis development path ollows the classic model or all disruptive tech-nologies: expensive at rst, and unable to compete directly with establishedmethods, they survive in a niche market long enough to effect improve-ments and reduce costs, and eventually overtake older systems in their core

markets. Studying the market or computer disk drives in the 1980s, busi-ness researcher Clayton M. Christensen observed that newer products typi-cally combined higher prices with lower storage capacity, but sold nonethe-less in niche markets where their small physical size was valued. Survivingon thin pro t margins, the new technologies incrementally improved untilthey eventually displaced the older models entirely. I digital manu actur-ing ollows this pattern, traditional plastics makers could be acing a majorshake-up. Te predictability with which technology becomes smaller, asterand cheaper is now embraced by Moores Law, named or Intel co- ounder

Gordon Moore, who rst postulated that the number o transistors on a chipwould double every two years.

Even now, these new technologies are enabling the production o a great variety o articles in small runs, or even individually. Printing-on-demandoffers everything rom greeting cards to books, while the ull range o conventional and digital 3D techniques offered by the new supply chain canmanipulate materials that include durable and super ne plastic, acrylic, sty-rene, silicone and thermoplastics; industrial metals such as stainless steeland aluminum; precious metals such as gold and silver; organic materialssuch as cork and bamboo, leather and elt, textiles and cardboard; and evenhardboard, plywood and MDF.

In one sweep, Mashable (Te top source or news in social and digitalmedia, technology and web culture) identi ed feen Web-based suppli-ers that would variously produce anything rom board games to textiles,observing that: Creating your own products used to mean a signi cant up-

ront investment purchasing a minimum amount o the product as dic-tated by the manu acturer, paying or warehousing, packaging, point-o -sale


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systems, and other overhead costs. And that was all be ore you even tooka single order! Tank ully, or many types o products, print-on-demandtechnologies have made it possible or anyone to create and sell goods overthe Internet with little or no up- ront costs. Many o these sites will also setup a virtual shop ront rom which to sell your particular goods. Comple-mentary online boutiques such as Etsy (Your place to buy and sell all thingshandmade) offer an elegant shop window or unique, upmarket pieces, orsmall runs o exquisite goods.

Early entrants such as Ca ePress (Te worlds avorite place to nd or makeunique -shirts and gifs) and Zazzle (We make quality custom productsdesigned by you) simply applied customers own artwork to amiliar pro-motional articles such as -shirts and mugs, and provided the transactional

acilities to sell these items online, only producing the actual merchandise

afer it was ordered and paid or. Now, anyone who can create a digital lecan send a complete design to suppliers such as Pokono (Te worlds easi-est making system) or Shapeways (Passionate about creating) and receivetheir completed product by mail shortly thereafer. I the rst one isnt quiteright, you can tweak the les yoursel , and order another one.

You can even buy your own desktop 3D printer, currently or a ew thou-sand dollars, and doubtless or less money with more unctionality asdemand grows. Or you could build an open-source RepRap printer, or

about US$800 worth o parts, and use it to recreate those same parts tobuild more RepRaps.

In 2010, with a desktop printer purchased or around US$2,000, Australiandesigner Luke Ritchie set himsel the challenge o the 1 Day Product, go-ing rom sketch to sale; conceptualizing, developing and producing a newproduct a magnetic drill bit caddy and posting it or sale online withina single day.

On another tack, in 2011 the Dutch rm Droog started selling design datain the orm o digital blueprints that can be taken to a local supplier or

abrication. Droog argues that digital distribution saves money on transportand warehousing, and offers new opportunities to engage clients or custom-ers in the design process.

Where Asian sourcing brings tooling costs down, digital production makestooling costs optional. Mass production is ideal or a vast range o manu ac-tured goods, but new technologies create a wealth o opportunities or smallbusinesses, niche markets, limited editions, customization, prototyping and


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just-in-time supply chains. And, o course, with exible new productiontechniques, new products dont have to be per ect rst time.

Te new manu acturing model is ast, exible, responsive, and cheap andit no longer has to cater to the masses. DesignDirect is ree to approachsmall markets, perhaps even a niche market containing only a hand ul ocustomers. Manu acturing has entered a new era; entrepreneurship willnever be the same.

New: Te long tail

Mass marketing, like mass production, suits many products and audienc-es. But the power o the Internet has revealed how the potential o myriadmicro-markets can now be addressed online. Te concept o the long tailneatly encapsulates this power ul economic model. Te term was popular-ized through Chris Andersons seminal article in Wired magazine in October2004, and the book that ollowed in July 2006. Although many o Andersonsexamples are drawn speci cally rom pop music and the movies, the prin-ciple applies to virtually everything that people share or trade, rom in or-mation and advice to goods and services.

Te critical insight is that, in markets o all kinds, there is typically a veryhigh demand or a relatively small number o very popular things, whether

blockbuster movies or basic oodstuffs. Tese high-volume sales have tra-ditionally shaped the entire supply chain, rom advertising budgets to shelspace. Conventional supply-and-demand dictates that it is most cost-effec-tive to concentrate on the things that people want most, and to t in a ewspecialist or niche offerings as circumstances allow. But those many, manyother things that lack mass appeal have their own niche markets and these,collectively, represent an enormous opportunity or DesignDirect business-es now that the Internet and digital communications offer new channels toreach those niches.

Te long tail describes the graphical representation o this phenomenon:a huge peak at the start o the graph represents the high demand or a rela-tively ew, very popular things (the short head); this drops off sharply toan effectively endless shallow line representing the low demand or a vastnumber o other things (the long tail). Where there are cost-effective meanso satis ying that low demand, the slow steady sales o the many individualthings in the long tail can, cumulatively, represent a substantial commercialopportunity. Tis is the breakthrough or designers and manu acturers whodo not necessarily aspire to mass markets: there are now ways and means


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both o creating unique products in small quantities, and o reaching theniche markets to which they appeal.

Te Internet has acilitated a new order o communication between thesemicro-markets, enabling people with common interests to nd each otheronline. Although they may share in ormation or exchange opinions, theseindividuals usually never meet ace-to- ace. (Occasionally, o course, theydo notably, in the trans ormation o singles clubs into the major social

orce that is now online dating.) Increasingly, special interest groups arealso learning how to exploit collective power rom a myriad o individuallocations, or everything rom online petitions to bulk buying. apping intothese networks represents another rich opportunity or producers in nichemarkets to reach their target audiences, however widely they may be distrib-uted geographically.

New: Diversi ed advertising

Te apogee o American mass-market advertising is the Super Bowl, thenal championship game o the National Football League (NFL) season,

which now has only its own ratings to beat or the largest audience in Amer-ican television some 111 million in 2011. Only unique live events, usuallyrelated to sports, can still command huge audiences all watching the samething at the same time; the next nearest record in American television was

set nearly thirty years ago, in 1983, or the series nale o M*A*S*H*. Withthe proli eration o entertainment media and channels, audiences are rag-menting, and while mass-market products retain their appeal, advertising isliterally going to pieces in search o its consumers. Te Internet and mobilecommunications are trans orming the world o marketing, and the alliedtrades o publicity, advertising, ul llment and customer service.

Advertising is changing to meet the demands o this rapidly diversi yingmarket, adjusting its messages rom mass media broadcasting to narrow-

casting directly to individual handheld devices such as cell phones andiPads. Savvy advertisers create media neutral content or use in an arrayo channels rom Web sites, blogs and social networks, to targeted text mes-saging, reaching individual consumers in unprecedented ways. You ubecommercials may deliberately dumb down production values to achieve a

aux amateurism that is calculated to make viewers eel that theyre seeingsomething more raw and genuine than a slick television campaign.

Now the ew can speak to the ew, sharing their special interests without dis-tractions rom the many who dont care. A designer with a special product


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to promote doesnt need a spot at the Super Bowl to get attention. Market-ing, like manu acturing, is now cheaper and more accessible than ever.

Te Internet allows product news to spread in entirely new ways. Terehave always been unexpected runaway successes, such as Im NO a plasticbag o ashion accessories designer Anya Hindmarch. But viral marketingtakes on a li e o its own. High-end blender manu acturer Blendtec createda uniquely success ul marketing campaign using You ube to distribute aseries o comic videos. Each o these show the genial company CEO stand-ing beside one o his blenders wearing a lab coat and sa ety goggles. Lookingenthusiastic, he picks up an iconic product like a Nintendo Wii, and askswill it blend? Ten he drops it into the jar o the waiting blender, andhammers the hapless product into a pulverized heap o steaming shreds. Aswell as establishing one o the most popular channels on You ube, the com-

pany claims to have increased sales o their extremely expensive products by700% within three years o launching the campaign.

New: Disintermediation

Te common actor in digital manu acturing and digital marketing is dis-intermediation the removal o the middleman. raditionally, retailing hasserved as a mediator to get the product rom the seller to the buyer. Shopsand stores offer a choice o products selected rom the much larger range

available rom manu acturers catalogues or trade shows. Now, disinterme-diation dispenses with the reseller. Customers can visit suppliers Web sitesdirectly, and order straight rom the manu acturer.

Disintermediation is a growing trend in virtually every sector. Savvy musi-cians sell directly to their ans rom their own Web sites, bypassing recordcompanies to produce singles and albums by themselves. Writers publishtheir own works online or through print-on-demand services such as Luluor Xlibris, which offers a range o at-rate packages to design, publish, pro-

mote and distribute paperback and hardcover books, e-books, photo books,CDs, DVDs, even artists port olios. Young Chinese ashion designers canset up online stores or their personal brands on aobao, and even start byselling a single garment to test the waters.

For designers, the client has also been a sort o mediator, putting them intouch with projects, conducting research, and re ning speci cations. Aboveall, clients tend to control manu acturing and distribution, or the very goodreason that they have the money and resources to do so.


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It is now possible to achieve all this without the backing o a corporation.A designer, an inventor, or an entrepreneur with an innovative idea, can

nd a supplier to turn that concept into a product, at an affordable price inlow volumes. Te Internet offers a marketing channel that allows productdesigners to create and control their own brands, and to sell them directlyto consumers, or through sites such as eBay, Etsy or Amazon. Online pay-ment systems such as PayPal support small traders, while those with some volume can easily build transactional Web sites with credit card acilities.Packaging ordered online can be delivered to the door, while online postageand courier services complete the ul llment cycle.

End result: DesignDirect

Any designer can now acquire the tools to produce, brand, and sell their

own products directly. Te key ingredients are vision and energy. Tis is thedawn o a new era in design and entrepreneurship DesignDirect.


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About the authors

Roger Ball PhD

As a practicing industrial designer, Roger Ball has crafed iconic sportsproducts or Burton Snowboards, Fisher-Price, Cooper Canada, I- echSports Products, Brine, Bell Sports and Nike, winning an IDSA Silver Award

rom the Industrial Designers Society o America in 1998 or Skycap, theworlds rst snowboard helmet.

Over a 20-year teaching career, Roger has led design studios in NorthAmerica, Asia and Europe. Now a Pro essor o Product Design at Te HongKong Polytechnic University, Roger is Program Leader or the Masters oDesign (Practices) and Leader o the Asian Ergonomic Lab. He holds an MFA

rom the Domus Academy, Milan, and a PhD in Ergonomics and Designrom the Delf University o echnology ( U Delf) in the Netherlands. His

anthropometric study, SizeChina, created the rst-ever 3D digital database oChinese head and ace shapes, winning many international awards, anddriving new developments in a wide range o products or the Asian market.

Heidi Overhill MFA

A museum design consultant or more than 20 years, Heidi Overhill hascreated temporary and permanent exhibitions or clients including theNational Gallery o Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Shania wainCentre in immins, Ontario, and the National Museum o the Philippinesin Manila.

Now a Pro essor at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada, Heidi teaches a variety o design studio and history courses. She holds a Bachelor o In-dustrial Design (BID) rom Carleton University, Canada, and a post-grad-uate certi cate in cultural history rom the Royal College o Art, London,

England, and recently completed an MFA at the University o Waterloo ora conceptual project titled Te Museum o Me (MoMe) which was pub-lished in Canadian Art magazine. In 2011 she started PhD studies in theFaculty o In ormation at the University o oronto, seeking to understandthe domestic kitchen as a cognitive structure.

DesignDirect_Chapter1

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