Hasta La Ideas

In this movie made as part of our collaboration with print-on-demand publisher Blurb, we visit three of the world’s leading 3D-printing pioneers, including Janne Kyttanen of Freedom of Creation (above), and explain how we produced Print Shift, the magazine about 3D printing that we launched earlier today.

Our road trip takes us across the Netherlands and Belgium, where many of the major players in 3D printing are clustered, including Amsterdam-based design studio Freedom of Creation.

Since launching its first range of 3D-printed lamps in Milan in 2003, FOC has pioneered the use of 3D-printing technology to create finished consumer products. “When I first saw the technology, I was mesmerised,” says Janne Kyttanen (above), co-founder of FOC. “I was like, ‘Woah! This is really going to change the world.’ I immediately saw the whole future. People would download files, print things at home, share files with others. It would be this crazy, crazy world where you could just create whatever you wanted.”

Our next stop is Leuven, Belgium, home to Europe’s biggest 3D-printing facility. Bart Van der Schueren (above), vice president at 3D-printing company Materialise, explains that more people now have access to 3D-printing technology than ever before.

“Rapid prototyping used to be an expensive technology,” he says. “But the further we go in time the technology becomes more and more affordable. That is why the consumer [now] gets access to these technologies.”

We finish our trip in Eindhoven at the offices of Shapeways, the world’s leading online 3D printing firm. Bart Veldhuizen (above), community manager at Shapeways, believes that 3D printing will soon become an indispensable technology in our lives.

“I really believe that in 10 to 15 years from now, if you looked back on the year 2013, you’d think: ‘Wow, I couldn’t get that customised? I couldn’t get that coffee machine ten percent smaller? That’s crazy, why not?'”

Print Shift was created by the Dezeen editorial team and produced with print-on-demand publisher Blurb. Eileen Gittins, Blurb CEO, explains how the ordering process works: “They’ll be printed one at a time based on the orders. So you come to Blurb, you place an order for a copy, it will be printed to your spec in real time and it will arrive on your doorstep in about a week’s time.”

Buy your copy of Print Shift for £8.95 plus postage and packing »

For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.

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saw the future” appeared first on Dezeen.