In the future computers will just take the fun out of everything...

A recent discussion with Craig at the GSA on open design brought up this website:

"Genovate is a design generation software that runs on top of your CAD package. Genovate will take your CAD design and create an unlimited amount of design variations. Genovate will transform your CAD into your creative ally."

Not very informative admittedly - it allegedly takes 3D CAD geometry and churns out a litter of geometric variations, based upon user specified constraints. Another aspect to the Dawrinian theory of design iterations that open source approaches tend to reference, ie survival of the fittest. perhaps this is a sign that where in the past designers create design mutations, this task can be computerised - another example of designer as facilitator rather than craftsperson?

The thinking behind instructables

The squid labs team explain some of the thoughts behind the instructables site, showing links to other well known collaborative design groups such as thinkcycle, design that matters and zeroprestige. Is MIT the source of all things, er, open source? Probably.

Open Source Hardware and Industry

"Here are some of my thoughts on the open source hardware movement and industry. This is not to say that we are only concerned with industry here, but more that we saw a lot of struggling over the years on how open source software could be beneficial to business and industry."

No time to read this now, but will digest it soon...

Open Source MP3 Player

"The main goal of this project is to create an open design for a portable MP3 player, in both hardware and software. The secondary goal of this project is to make it as simple to construct, and as cheap, as possible." - AVR Butterfly MP3

OScar

OScar is an open source car project. With a very enthusiastic and idealistic mission, it seeks to involve contributors from schools through to car manufacturers themselves.

The Perfect T-Shirt

London company, Better Thinking, have been consulting the web community on how to creat a 100% sustainable T-Shirt.

Open Source Kite Design

"www.zeroprestige.org is a weblog devoted to the design iteration of kitesurfing and kitepowered sports. Principally we are interested in furthering the sport by enabling an 'open source' (shared knowledge and documentation) approach to kite-building and to the building of bars, boards, ice and snow equipment, and things kite-powered in general."

Two of my favourite things: kites and open source design.

Unfortunately the site seems to be a little dormant for now, the creator now working at the very interesting Squid Labs, who are responsible for Instructables and its descendant,Howtoons - they also keep an interesting blog, outlining as it does some of their day-today approach and thinking on collaborative design.

Tiletoy

http://www.tiletoy.org/

An open source product

Eyebeam Openlab

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Responsible for Throwies

instructables

http://www.instructables.com/

Open Source Car

Supporting OSGV | Open Source Car SUV Pickup Truck Minivan | OSGV

Another linkdiscovered through Wikipedia - designing a more eco-friendly and safe vehicle through an open source process. Many collaborators are from within the commercial automobile industry and wish to remain anonymous due to potnential to be accused of being anti competitive. Ironic because the aims of the project are just that, to design a vehicle so much better that it can compete with existing manufacturers, encouraging them into more responsible behaviour.

Open design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Never seen this before, the open design page on wikipedia. Will explore the links ASAP.

Kadushin

Open Source Design in practice. Using the creative commons license to publish PDF layouts for laser cutting. Mostly household - candle holders/ lamps etc.