Bemz is a company that specialises in slip cover for a lot of IKEA sofas and chairs. I love them, since they recently added my type of IKEA sofa in their assortment. Just a while ago, I ordered some fabric samples and I must say … it won’t take that long before I place my order.

Next to the fabulous slip covers, they also have a very interesting blog. And it’s thanks to this  that I got to know these two sites that give you the opportunity to design your own rug. So check out Rug Designer or Rug Couture and start creating your own rug!

Alice Rawsthorn of the New York Times recently wrote in interesting piece concerning co-design and customisation:

“We can now “co-design” real objects thanks to digital technology, which enables us to communicate directly with manufacturers to personalize aspects of their products. Fancy customizing the style and fit of Nike trainers? Choosing the colors of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses? Specifying the interior of a Fiat 500 car? Rapid manufacturing processes, like the one used by Digital Forming, will soon allow anyone to adjust the shape of objects — and not just to indulge stylistic whims but to make, say, a pen, easier to grip by someone with arthritic hands. There could be environmental benefits, too, as bespoke manufacturing erases the need for stock.”

The full article can be found here.

The city of Brussels is concentrating on all aspects of design during the month of September with exhibitions, conferences, private showings, film screenings, debates, visits to designers’ studios, flea market, city tours ….

An interesting workshop is : CUSTOMIZE IT  by RECYCLART

Do you feel like a new flashy colour for your bike, a customised logo on your  skateboard, to revamp the family scooter? Your home-made mode of transport is  really too ugly? Good news: bring them all with you. A team of artists and designers  will undertake their customisation. Share your creativity with them and create a  unique item that will be the envy of all. Finally, strike a pose and the Studio Marcel  will immortalise you together with your vehicle! Or just drop in to take a look and  have a bite to eat and something to drink on the terrace of the Recyclart bar!

Sunday 20th September, Recyclart, Brussels-Chapelle station, rue des Ursulines 25,  1000 Brussels – Info: 02 502 57 34 – www.recyclart.be. Open from 2 PM to 6 PM.

Clothing  is seen as an expression of one’s identity or as a symbol of the social group/culture one is belonging to, so why not wearing a smart, flex-image fabric that displays pieces of ones social network directly on clothes.

The OSMO Custom Social Network Wearable allows participants to customize clothing with smart, flex-image fabric.

The OSMO wearable is not only a wearable piece of your personal voice but it’s also connected, networked and alive. It communicates with your iPhone applications, detects “friends” from your Loopt™ profile and picks up and displays images from other participants in close proximity.

Source: Talk2myShirt, Creating Space

Some months ago one of my colleagues pointed me to a talk by the American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In his presentation “The Paradox of Choice” he focusses on one of the central elements of our Western Society, the freedom of choice. Common belief starts from the idea that we need a lot of choice to feel free. Schwartz argues that too much freedom will eventually make us “more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied”.

I’d like to link the concept of “too much choice” to an element my colleague Katrien stumbled upon. She found research which indicated that in the process of mass customization the concept of  mass confusion is likely to pop up. Mass confusion can be seen as the burden of all the effort, complexity and risk a customization process provokes.

In an article titled “Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities “ a way to overcome mass confusion is co-designing: collaboratively working on a design would make it easier to overcome the stress of mass confusion.

In customisation process finding the right balance between (collective) guidance & individual freedom should thus be one of the key questions.