Last night getitmade.com collaborated with Interactive Design Agency Conran Singh to host the first in their new series of events - The CONRAN future sessions. The debate focused on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing from a product designer's perspective. The panelists included Daljit Singh from Conran Singh, design writer Barbara Chandler, Nicolas Roope from POKE London and Plumen and Alexander Grunsteidl from Method with writer and Innovation consultant Nico Macdonald from Spy acting as moderator.
It was a great start to the CONRAN future sessions, with insightful contributions from both panelists and the audience. Some of the subjects covered included:
- Many great products never make it to market because of life or death funding decisions taken by funders remote from the market. In other words, funding defines design. Crowdfunding allows you to access your product's market directly, democratising funding. Changing the nature of funding has the potential to change design.
- Is the Internet a meritocracy? Will the best products succeed?
- Crowdfunding allows us to support products we believe in: that's important, and creates engagement. Engaged, often passionate users become your product's best advocates and help market your product.
- Crowdfunding potentially allows anyone with a good idea and perseverance to realise that idea; a good parallel being the way musicians are by-passing traditional routes to their audience.
- The Internet is inverting the publishing business, can crowdsourcing do this to product design and development?
- The importance of being first to market and establishing a brand. That brand will be your best protection against ripoffs. Then "Invent early, invent often" to protect your brand via constant innovation.
- The crowdsourcing debate provided a more nuanced discussion with examples sited of crowdsourced design having mixed results. Great design is hard, whoever and however many people undertake it. Perhaps the crowd doesn't create, but can provide valuable feedback and help remove rough edges from products or help take products in new directions.
Thanks again for Conran Singh for providing the venue and for all those who participated in a fascinating and insightful debate.
Crowdfunding- the future of design or the designer's IP nightmare?
First Session Thursday 14th July
This Thursday night Interactive Design Agency Conran Singh, part of Sir Terence Conran’s design group, will host the first in their new series of events - The CONRAN future sessions - which will discuss current and emerging issues in the design world.
The first event, produced in collaboration with crowdfunding platform getitmade.com, will focus on the subject of Crowdfunding - the future of design or the designer's IP nightmare?
Designing, manufacturing and marketing a product is a difficult enough challenge for most creative producers at the best of times – let alone when most investors are tightening their belts and battening down the hatches. Fortunate, then, that we have that global panacea – the Internet – to help us get into new markets the easy way. Networked technologies are starting to help creative folks connect with one another and with potential backers to help them take their ideas beyond the drawing board onto the shelf.
'Crowdsourced' and 'crowdfunded' products provide new local ways for expertise to scale to a global marketplace, but surely there are still huge pitfalls to avoid?
How can the small, enthusiastic creator put their ideas out there into the public domain whilst still avoiding having their intellectual property being stolen by larger, global corporations? How does ownership of an idea work in this new economy? Doesn't the designer compromise their creative thought by having to deal with so many stakeholders? Can anything produced this way really be any good – or do we need to rebuild those ivory towers and put the designer firmly back in their place?"
Panelists Daljit Singh from Conran Singh, design writer Barbara Chandler, Nicolas Roope from POKE London and Plumen and Alexander Grunsteidl from Method will discuss this increasingly relevant and fascinating topic, with writer and Innovation consultant Nico Macdonald from Spy acting as moderator
Conran Singh is the Interactive Design Agency owned by Terence Conran and Daljit Singh and is part of the CONRAN group of design led businesses which includes Conran & Company (Brand Licensing), Conran & Partners (Architecture & Interior Design), Studio Conran (Product Design and Branding) and The Conran Shop (Design-led retail).
Getitmade.com is a new kind of marketplace where ‘crowdfunding’ allows designers, inventors and ideasmakers to take their creations from prototype to production.
Crowdfunding is investment via social media and the internet. It rewards innovation with orders: if enough people pre-order a product, their pledged capital pushes the product into manufacturing. For more information on getitmade.com and crowdfunding please contact Greta Corke at greta.corke@getitmade.com
Nico Macdonald is a writer and consultant focused on innovation and the creative industries. His clients include BBC Future Media & Technology and BT plc. He is co-author of BIG POTATOES: The London Manifesto for Innovation (bigpotatoes.org). Publications for which he writes include the Guardian, the RSA Journal and BBC News Online, and he is author of 'What is Web Design?' (RotoVision). He chairs the Media Futures Conference. His site is at http://www.spy.co.uk/
For more information about the event or to receive a press invite please contact Holly-Anne Rolfe at Conran Singh holly@conransingh.com or call 020 7827 4221
According to innovators Arash and Kelly, the
Lord of the Flies designer fly swat – now available for pre-order – is a philosophical take on the decision to kill a fly or to let it live.
It is certainly a striking piece of artwork. Sculpted out of flexible polypropylene plastic, the Lord of the Flies swat was inspired by the image of the hand of Fatima, used to ward evil away from the home – an appropriate enough sentiment, given how annoying a housefly can be.
This hand, however, is decorated by the intricate henna designs of Mehndi, applied during certain Hindu celebrations such as weddings and Diwali – a message of peace if there ever was one.
Helping hand
What there can be no argument about is the goodwill behind the hand. Any profits made from the sale of the fly swats will be invested to establish a new women’s co-operative in Morocco to produce 100% organic Argan oil, a mineral rich substance used in couscous and for dipping bread. Cosmetics companies also use Argan oil to make skin and hand creams.
Arash and Kelly are working with 12 local women to help them set up their business and – crucially – to help them tap directly into export markets to boost their income.
“Our vision for the cooperative is to become a profitable business,” Arash told us, “All the profit to be reinvested within the community to protect the Argan forests, to create jobs and to provide training for the community. These co-operatives are a life line for women seeking refuge for whatever reason, having been abandoned by family and with nowhere else to go.”
Find out more about the Lord of the Flies swat here
Want to order a fly swat but not sure how getitmade.com works? Find out more here
This week, the
Oats Made Easy porridge bowl became the first product on
getitmade.com to go into the pre-sale phase, meaning that it is now officially available to order.
As with all the best ideas, the Oats Made Easy concept is simple: the perfect bowl of porridge relies on you measuring out the oats and milk properly, so the bowl has markings on it to tell you how much to put in. It is dishwasher-safe, so if you pop the bowl in the microwave to make the porridge then there’s no extra washing to do afterwards.
We at getitmade.com are all porridge fans (and fans of anything that mean we don’t have to work hard, so we love this bowl), but it’s not just us: more people are eating porridge in the mornings than ever before. It’s healthy, full of vitamins and minerals and it’s a great start to the day.
We’ll be talking more to Oats Made Easy innovator Tim Evans over the coming week, but in the meantime check out our interview with him here. And let us know what you think about the Oats Made Easy bowl became the first product on getitmade.com!
Want a bowl, but not sure how getitmade.com works? Find out more here
This week, our first product – Tim Evan’s awesome porridge bowl – went live for pre-orders. In short, getitmade.com is now open for business!
Getitmade.com is a new kind of marketplace where ‘crowdfunding’ allows designers, inventors and idea-makers to take their creations from prototype to production.
Crowdfunding is investment via social media. It rewards innovation with orders: if enough people pre-order a product, their pledged capital pushes the product into manufacturing.
The getitmade.com team love innovation; we believe that everyone has one great invention inside them. We set up the site because we know how frustrating it can be to get a new product idea from prototype to production, and we wanted to give people the opportunity to create something original for themselves – opportunities that would never have existed without the internet and social media.
How Getitmade.com works
Getting something made on getitmade.com begins when an innovator posts their idea on the site. If the idea is strong enough and generates interest from potential buyers, getitmade.com will work with the innovator to take the product to the production line, using capital pledged by pre-orders. Unlike other crowdsourcing sites, innovators on getitmade.com retain all intellectual rights to their creations.
For more information about how getitmade.com works, visit our support section.
You can keep track of products on getitmade.com; innovators are encouraged to talk about their creative process on their own pages, and to respond to any customer questions. You can also stay up-to-date with the latest innovations on our Facebook page – be sure to pop by and say hello!
We’ll be announcing the next products that will be available for pre-sale over the next few days on this blog, so stay tuned. In the meantime, swing by Tim Evan’s porridge bowl page and see what you think.
