TIMELINE: A century of product design

Holy Ghost Chairs, designed by Lionel T. Dean for Kartell, 2006. The chairs use the latest rapid prototyping technology to produce morphed versions of Philippe Starck’s classic Louis Ghost chair (see p. 41).

Individualized products

Individualized production involves the manufacture of bespoke products. An example of this type of product is the focus for Lionel T. Dean, a researcher at the University of Huddersfield, who launched FutureFactories, a digital manufacturing concept for the mass individualization of products. FutureFactories explores flexible design and manufacture made possible by digital technologies (principally, but not exclusively, rapid prototyping). FutureFactories’ aim is the individualized production of one-off products via an element of computer-generated random form.