Just off the phone with my new friend Charlie Maddock, Director of Biz Dev for Shapeways, and I am a huge fan of what they’re doing.

Overview

Shapeways is the world’s first 3D printing community that allows users to upload designs of just about anything and bring them to life - including cuff links, home decor, iPad cases, board games, jewelry, and much more. If you can design it, they can make it real.

For those who aren’t designers, they have a easy-to-use customization portal on their website that lets people customize things like sake sets in minutes. Check it out here. Or you can browse and buy the creations of others.

How does it work?

In their words: “We define 3D printing as any additive manufacturing process whereby one machine turns a digital file into a finished physical object by building up that object layer by layer. If you were to be more precise the technology would be called rapid manufacturing and 3D printing would just be one of the manufacturing processes used to create objects in this way.”

Still don’t get it? Watch the video below.

How Can Brands/Advertisers/Creatives Use It?

1. Shapeways 3D Design Classes: They’re already hosting classes on Skillshare, but for agencies and other creative companies, it would be great to have Shapeways come in and do a class for your employees. It would add another weapon to your design arsenal for both clients and internal creative executions.
2. Design Contests: Have a brand start a design contest for Shapeways community to participate in. Kool-Aid could incentivize people to create cool Kool-aid Man products, IKEA could have people create home decor, and the list could go on and on.
3. Branded Store: Creative shops could/should open up branded stores within Shapeways to showcase and even sell designs from their creatives. It’s innovative, forward-thinking, and a great portfolio piece to showcase to clients.
4. Just make/buy cool stuff: Strategic initiatives aside, use Shapeways to make cool stuff for the office, home, of as gifts. Their products are one-of-a-kind, sure to impress others, and give a wow factor to those uninitiated to the brand. For ideas, check out their gift guide that’s organized by personality type.

Things to Note

• Shapeways is opening a factory in New York in 2012, which will improve logistics as well as establish a physical presence for people to tour and get to know the technology. New York, being the design hub that it is, will undoubtedly show its support upon opening.
• Printing materials include stainless steel, silver, sandstone, ceramics, and much more. Full list here.
• If you can’t attend a Shapeways class, no worries. They have a robust repository of tutorials and downloadable models.

In short, I highly recommend getting to know Shapeways. Whether for a brand or yourself, it’s products are undeniably cool, custom, and innovative.

1. Tets+: 30 tutorial videos that walk you through html and css from the very beginning - for free.
2. CSS Tricks: Blog w/ designer interviews, code snippets, downloads, forums, and more. The content is pretty advanced, so it’s best suited for those already with an understanding of CSS.
3. Lea Verou: An incredible designer who has developed a set of CSS3 tools that showcase and help you develop patterns, gradients, animations, and more.
4. W3 Schools: The standard resource for just about all languages. It’s not the easiest to consume, but it has all the information you’ll ever need in text form - and will almost always appear as a top result for any questions you type into Google.
5. Colorzilla Gradient Generator: Tool that makes it easy to create CSS3 gradients.
6. Box and Shadow Generator: Tool that makes it easy to create shapes and drop shadows using CSS3.
7. Amazing CSS3 Animations: List of 47 cool animations using CSS3 compiled by webdesignerwall.com. It doesn’t show you how to make them, but is a great place for inspiration and to see what CSS3 is capable of.