Customize Your Ikea furniture with Mykea
Mykea is a Dutch company that lets you personalize your Ikea furniture. According to the company, “We are now the company that enables everybody to customize their Ikea furniture and thereby giving their interior a trendy look and making their homes more personal and unique with the MyKea Design Covers.” The covers, giant stickers, can be made for a number of furniture pieces. You could take your own design or buy one from a designer. Once you order a piece it is delivered to you and you can stick the cover on your furniture.
Designers can participate and earn money by uploading designs and selling them on the site. The company aims to create a community and the website is very slick and easy to use. I wonder if they”ll stick to the covers or offer more services such as painting or even more fundamental customization. Previously several groups of artists and designers were involved in more radical customization with Ikea furniture with Hacking Ikea projects. Do check ou
Objectified – A documentary about industrial design
“Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it’s about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don’t believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) Who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? All of these objects are “designed,” but how can good design make them, and our lives, better?” – Gary Hustwit –
According to director Gary Hustwit, the term objectified has two meanings. One is ‘to be treated with the status of a mere object.’ But the other is ‘something abstract expressed in a concrete form,’ as in the way a sculpture objectifies an artist’s thoughts. It’s the act of transforming creative thought into a tangible object, which is what designers in this film do every day. But maybe there’s a third meaning to this title, regarding the ways these objects are affecting us and our e
3D printing in contemporary art: Nick Ervinck
3D printing is becoming more and more the technology of choice for artists nowadays. Artists’ models often employ a variety of different materials involving small and intricately detailed pieces with various shapes and curves, and special kinds of finishes that accentuate artistic elements. 3D printing allows artists to manufacture forms and shapes that cannot be fabricated in any other way. A lot of them are collaborating with Materialise because sometimes the unthinkable becomes a tangible reality. Meet Nick Ervinck.
“I make sculptures that are on the edge of the physical and digital realm in terms of sculpture and architecture. The art of sculpting has evolved through history with the help of technology. Because architects design mainly with computers now, a new type of language is created. In light of this, I see this new world of architecture as a precursor for what will happen in the world of art and sculpture. It’s great that high-tech companies like Materialise are help
i.materialise buys a Makerbot!
Our software development team and most of our customer services team are in Kiev, Ukraine. Since we don”t have a production facility there they aren”t surrounded by 3D printers like the rest of us here in Belgium. To compensate the team bought and built a Makerbot. One of the main reasons for getting it was to show job applicants going through the interview process a 3D printer in action. Franky (our designer) took some pictures of the wonderful little device while he was over there. The team loves it and enjoyed building it very much.
The first thing the team 3D printed was the Materialise Ukraine logo.
Maksym, one of the builders reports that, “It took 3 evenings * 3 hours each * 5.5 people = 49.5 man hours to assemble the thing. The build went smoothly but they did have some issues,
- Initially it was difficult for plastic to stick to the platform:
- When the structure is flat and thick it starts to deform and peel off the platform
- Small details can cause plastic
Shapeways: Revenue, Profit, Competitors
In a Dutch interview Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen talks about some interesting Shapeways facts. The company generated 244,000 Euro in Revenue over 2009. During the same period Shapeways lost 1,400,000 Euro. He also mentions that the outsourced production companies Shapeways uses to make its 3D prints are 3D printing 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. Peter mentions that the Shapeways sells 10,000 objects a month and reiterates that Union Square Ventures & Index Ventures have put $5 million into the company.
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5 Amazing full sized furniture pieces made with 3D printing
3D printing seems to be all over the media lately. I already mentioned it in my previous blog post ”FULL PRINT3D”, but everyone writing these articles seems to be showing only a glimpse of what the technology is capable of. So why not write a series of blog posts to show the versatility of 3D printing? That’s what I thought. I’d like to start with the subject of furniture because I believe 3D printing is taking furniture design to a whole other level. Just ask French designer Patrick Jouin, who actually created the first large scale scale furniture pieces through 3D printing technology together with. MGX. It’s no surprise Materialise’s big mammoth stereolithography 3D printers had something to do with it. Here are, in no particular order, 5 amazing furniture piece made with 3D printing.
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Maintenance on production servers this weekend Nov 12 and 14
We are planning a maintenance on our production servers this weekend from Friday November 12 at 18h00 CET till Sunday 14 at noon.
We will minimize the impact on the site but online prices will be unavailable from time to the time. It will stay possible to send us your offline price requests. We”re so sorry about this interruption to i.materialise but we”re working on making it better.
Marloes ten Bhömer 3D prints individualised shoes
One thing I’ve always been interested in 3D printing shoes. To make custom made shoes that look exactly how people want them, that fit exactly and that are customized for my weight and walk is a dream of mine. So I was happy to read about designer Marloes ten Bhömer”s Rapidprototypedshoe.
The shoe is intended as a 3D printed couture shoe customized for the individual. The shoe is also designed to wear and break down in layers so it can be augmented and repaired. I really think that 3D printing individualised shoes is an industry waiting to happen. If you are a shoe designer and want to get involved with our efforts in 3D printing shoes, please email joris (at) i.materialise.com
Marloes has a lot of very creative and beautiful shoe designs on her site here.
via Core77.
Iris van Herpen wins Rado Young Designer Award
Dutch Fashion designer Iris van Herpen won a Rado Young Designer Award at Dutch Design Week. The Dutch Design Week is the Netherland”s largest design event and the accompanying awards are a a great win for her. This is her second Dutch Design Award, having received one last year also. One of Iris” most well known works is the “Crystallization” fashion collection she did with Daniel Widrig. The collection was 3D printed here at Materialise and made in conjunction with Materialise”s own design label MGX. Congrats (and sorry I didn”t post this earlier) to Ms. van Herpen!
Beautiful Modeler by Interactive Fabrication, Rocks! Multitouch design for 3D printing using your iPad!
Beautiful Modeler is a tool that combines the iPad with a Mac and turns it into a wonderful 3D modeling tool. I think its absolutely fantastic and a real portent of what is possible. The iPad acts as a controller and be moving and slanting the iPad you can change the orientation of your model on screen. Each model has a set of points and you can manipulate and change these points with your fingers. This is how easy a lot of 3D modeling tools have to be are we to get everyone started with 3D printing. And yes, the output from this nifty, and open source tool, can be exported to STL and 3D printed! I adore Beautiful Modeler by Interactive Fabrication!
Check out the video of it in action below:
