Self production and triaxial jacquard. A practical enquiry into emergent forms of design entrepreneurship

The traditional role of the designer within the professional world has usually been linked to industrial serial production, often involving a very structured set of skills (problem solving and representation skills as well as material knowledge). The responsibilities of his role were limited to the creative process and his knowledge didn’t cover the financial or the technical aspects of a product, features which demanded other professionals’ work. However recently the traditional structure of companies, based on industrial product development, has started to not always being able to face the several cultural, technological and economical challenges of the current market (e.g. demand for customized goods, leverage of local resources, user involvement), which instead represent new opportunities for designers. Thanks these recent changes, one person is now able to achieve a sufficient proficiency in all aspects regarding production, distribution and project development, allowing the person to produce by himself. The research that follows draws the attention to exploration of the current design landscape and analysis of the contemporary range of different phenomena related to self-production. The aim of the present study is to collect several findings, to put together an overview of the different instances of self-production and to formulate a set of recurring self-producing designer characteristics. Furthermore, through an analysis of selected case studies, the research articulates a subjective, functional set of self-production distinctive traits, with the purpose of elucidating the implications of being an auto-produced designer today.