Mass-customization is a term/concept that has been in use for a few years now and one that deserves some attention from the print community. Mass-customization put simply “is the large scale production of custom things.” Puma, Nike, Timbuk2 are examples of established brands allowing consumers design input (within a template). CafePress, Zapfab, and Lulu are newer internet companies that allow consumers to custom design products again within a template.

The Zapfab website has two main areas: the Design Catalog and the 3D Customizer. The Design Catalog contains all the designs on the site and is a repository like Google’s 3D warehouse. The 3D Customizer is where the customizing takes place: Each design can be customized in different ways: color, size, pattern, etc. and the 3D Customizer contains simple controls for each of the options. So, once a user has customized a design, she can save it back into the catalog for other people to see. And then they in turn can customize and build on her design.

One could argue that classifying hand-printing processes under “large scale production” is a stretch. That is true to a point but there is potential overlap in terms of approach. Mass-customization provides a different framework for thinking about printing. To put this in a printmaking context, Seattle-based artist Laura Zeck makes customized etchings under the project title Short Stories. Zeck offers a visual lexicon of images that viewer/customers can pick through to create a more personal print. The artist has a series of approximately three-hundred matrixes that can be combined in a nearly infinite number of combinations. The system is the artwork.

This model wouldn’t work for all artists, or even a majority of them, but it opens up interesting possibilities for some. Many of us have made what we consider to be a good print only to edition it and have that edition gather dust. Redefining our notion of “edition” through the filter of mass-customization may provide a more productive alternative.