Design is More Than Settings

Or: Why I won't share mine anymore.

Printing a Scoop Lamp

I’m the founder and lead designer at Wooj, a 3D printing company based out of Brooklyn, New York. This Substack is devoted to thoughts on design, business, and technology.

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I run a company called Wooj Design. We make 3D printed lighting. People often ask me on Instagram to share our STL files or tell them what software and settings we use (our most popular content ever was a video where I detailed the software that I used). For a while, I was okay with sharing this information. But recently, I've become more reluctant. Why?

There are two parts to this answer, and they're both important.

The first part is the value of “practice” in design. When I say practice, I mean it in two ways. There's the verb - “to practice”, to do something repeatedly to improve your skill. And there's the noun - a “design practice”, the ongoing, evolving work of a professional designer or studio. Both are crucial, and both are at risk when we focus too much on getting quick solutions.

3D printing is a relatively new technology. The tools we use are new. We're in uncharted territory, which means we have a really exciting opportunity to establish new techniques and approaches. But these don't emerge from following instructions. They come from dedicated practice: learning, experimentation (and its close cousin, frustration), refinement, and discovery.

This practice often leads us down unexpected paths many of which are extremely exciting. For instance, we've started using AI image generation tools in our design process (a controversial topic worth exploring more deeply) - but not in the way you might expect. We've created workflows to transform sketches we're drawing on a tablet into more fleshed-out concepts in real time, used it to generate patterns which we then apply as skins onto our 3D forms, and trained it on our own work to generate extrapolated concepts which we can then produce. All fairly unexplored territory for a design studio. The vast majority of these ideas will not pan out, but that's part of the process!

One of our latest designs made use of a software called CLO, which is typically used in the fashion industry to create and design garments. We used it in a completely non-typical way to generate a form which we could 3D print into a lamp. The software really didn't want to be used this way, but our persistence yielded a surprising and relatively novel result.

A surprising and relatively novel result

When someone asks me for our exact settings or files, what they're really asking for is a shortcut. They want the outcome without the practice. But in design, the practice is everything. A lot of the work goes into simply understanding how to do some of these things, work that is completely short-circuited if I just tell you how to do it.

Think about learning to play an instrument. You could memorize the finger positions for a song without understanding music theory or developing muscle memory. You might be able to play that one song, but you wouldn't really be a musician. You'd struggle to improvise or compose your own music.

The same is true in design. If I tell you exactly how to achieve a certain effect, I'm robbing you of the chance to develop it through practice. And in that practice lies the real value.

But there's a second part to this answer, and it's one that's harder to talk about in the design community. It's about business.

The reality is, part of my reluctance to share everything comes from a desire to capitalize on what I've developed through my own practice. This isn't greed - it's a recognition of the time, effort, and resources that went into developing our designs and techniques.

We already have a number of copycats. Typically, we only have a couple of months before we start to see imitations, ranging from crude approximations to near-perfect clones. It's flattering, but also challenging from a business perspective.

So yes, I want to retain a bit of a head start. I want the fruits of our labor to have time to ripen before others start picking from our tree. But - and this is crucial - I don't want to stifle new ideas and growth in the industry and in young designers in particular.

This is the balancing act that every creative company faces: how do we protect our designs while still contributing to the growth of our field?

I don't have a perfect answer. But I'm working towards an approach that nurtures both our business and the wider design community. Maybe it's about sharing principles rather than specifics (like this essay, perhaps). Maybe it's about encouraging questions that lead to understanding, not just replication. Maybe it's about building a community where we celebrate the process of practice as much as the final outcome.

What I do know is this: the most valuable thing I can share isn't my settings or my files. It's the encouragement to embrace the practice of design, to put in the hours, to find your own way. Because that's where real design happens.

And who knows? Maybe the techniques you develop through your practice will push the boundaries of what's possible in ways I haven't even imagined. Maybe you'll create something that makes our designs look dated and trite.

That's the beauty of a true design practice - it's always evolving, always pushing forward. And that's something worth protecting, even as we find ways to share and grow together.

Appendix: Tools and Resources We Use

While I believe in the importance of personal discovery, I also recognize the value of having a starting point. Here are some of the tools and resources we use at Wooj:

1. Printers: For beginners, I recommend the Bambu A1. The mini version starts at $249 and is an excellent entry point. The full-size version at $349 offers incredible value.

2. Software:

   • Design: We use Grasshopper and Rhino for designing forms and facades. These are then brought into tools like Fusion 360 or Solidworks for creating mechanical parts. Alternatives include Onshape or other sketch-based CAD software.

   • AI-assisted design: We use Stable Diffusion with the ComfyUI interface for ideation and texture creation. The node-based workflow is powerful and familiar to Grasshopper users.

   • Slicers: We use a variety of slicers including Prusaslicer, Bambuslicer, Orcaslicer, and sometimes Cura. Each offers slightly different settings.

   • Custom solutions: We sometimes generate gcode ourselves using Grasshopper.

3. Emerging tools: FullControl looks promising, though we haven't had the chance to use it extensively yet.

4. Books and Education:

   • Advanced 3d Printing with Grasshopper - A great primer on breaking down the building blocks of GCODE and how you can write your own using Grasshopper.

   • Teaching Tech - A great Youtuber who talks at length about new developments in 3d printing, and how you can improve your 3d printing

   • CNC Kitchen - Another great, analytical 3d print Youtuber. Talks at length about print settings, how to get strong parts, and many new developments in 3d printing.

Remember, while we use these tools in our design practice, the magic happens in how you incorporate them into your practice. Don't be afraid to experiment, push boundaries, and use software in ways it wasn't intended. That's often where the most exciting designs occur.