With every technological innovation in Industrial Design there is an accompanying conceptual change about how materials are used, how forms are put together, what they symbolize and how their existence changes the way we reflect upon the design and the design process. We are currently in the midst of such a change. Digital technologies offer designers a new context to challenge the methods of mass production with inventive and very different means of making, forms of manufacture, and avenues of distribution within the broader context of virtual systems, services and networks.

This paper documents an ongoing sequence of projects by both design academics and students from Victoria University of Wellington seeking to explore these issues. Through the process of practice-based research we demonstrate that digital technologies are capable of both expressing and expanding traditional notions of workmanship and craftsmanship–to revive and embody its emotive and meaningful qualities within these new emerging social contexts and systems of making.