If the concept of mass customization seems like an oxymoron, meet Bryce and Kerry Moore, owners of Context Furniture.
"We started in the furniture business based on this process, that by showing the products and how they were made, people would understand they could interact with them and change them," Kerry Moore says. "And that's not really hjow the industry's set up, so trying to explain that people can interact with the process was difficult."
After three collections, the Moores realized that education needed to be a part of the process.
"We threw our hands up in the air and said, maybe we need to be selling the process," Kerry Moore says. "And that's really how Design Democracy 08 evolved."
In an effort to meld design and consumerism, the Moores have started the Design Democracy collective, an attempt to help educate consumers and designers about how technology can be used to produce one-off, cost-effective custom designs.
"These are stepping stones," Kerry Moore says. "We hope to see 'mass customization' as a term become more well known, especially in educational circles, and for designers to uderstand term."
Moore envisions a future when design specs are available on via a network, and can be downloaded and produced globally - with royalties paid to the designer, of course.
But the first step in the process is a contest in which interested designers can upload designs to the Design Democracy Web site. The Moores will produce the winning design and take it to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York.
"Our idea is to show up and say, this is something we made in eight weeks," she says. "It might be a big learning experience."
Interested designers should visit Design Democracy. Entry deadline is March 21.
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