Media artist and composer, Rob Canning, further expanded our knowledge about open design ecology and the many possibilities this offers to designers.

Open design encourages freely sharing of design information whether it be software or hardware. Creators and re-creators alike thrive to continuously improve or reinterpret existing work and tools.

Copyleft attitude is a play-on-words of it's legal rival, Copyright, wherein remix is allowed by adding one's own tweak as digital media has made reproducing and remixing easier to do. Newton's quote supports the copyleft attitude and remix culture as it relates to "building on what has come before". This freedom to alter and rework an existing work is very attractive thus is being widely practiced, whether intentionally or unknowingly especially in these digital ages.

Copyright on the other hand is the total opposite of copyleft and restricts tweaks and remixes, reproductions, and distributions of existing work. It grants the "author" the exclusive rights to the "ownership" of the work thus prohibiting people from making further improvements or re-creations based upon it.

Because of the freedom of reproducing and distribution of these derivative work, a new set of rules has been applied for copyleft so that fair usage and "rights" are common to all.

The basic rule of copyleft is that:

Whatever rights were given to you, the work you create from it must also include the same rights you derived your work from.
In general, the rights "travel" with the work.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) not only allows it to be used and redistributed freely, but most of all the source-code of the software is available to be voluntarily developed by its users. In contrast with proprietary software and it's restrictions and the only permission is allowing one to be an end-user.

<< These are a few successful open-source software.

An open prototype requires that the user to be actively and directly involved and it can be handed over to them.

A closed prototype is more of an experience wherein the user is just an 'audience' and won't directly participate in. This is effective for complex scenarios, but learning from a closed prototype is more difficult because of the lack of involvement.

Rapid prototyping as the name suggests allows quick prototype fabrications. It is the talk of the town in the design world with machines such as laser cutters and 3D printers opening up possibilities in various industries.

For the workshop part, we were introduced to MakerCase to create a case design which could be later on laser cut. Afterwards, we imported our template into Inkscape, a FOSS for vector images, much like Illustrator to customise our boxes.

The video below shows that FOSS can match up to proprietary software to complete the same task and produce high quality work.

Open Design