Core77 has a story on a designer, Alan Chao, who published one of his designs on the DIY site Ponoko and then sold the rights of production to Veer, a stock art and font shop who also seel typograpically themed home goods. The jist of the article is that he was able to get the idea from sketch to market in 24 days, chopping months off a normal time line and was able to improve the design from customer feedback after the product had launched. It is an interesting article well worth a read.
The big question this raises is how long until there is a “Napster” for physical goods? This design would be incredibly easy to copy, any designer who liked it could recreate the design in Illustrator in minutes, and with access to a laser make it for a dollar or so in materials.
Current technology will only enable the copying of relatively simple, flat designs like this coaster. Advances in the required material science to enable more complex copies are a decade or more off, but it does seem to be a question of when and not if it will happen.
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