Remember how everyone used to wrap their school textbooks in funky gift-wrap or magazine pages to liven them up a bit? Well, with textbooks dying out and many schools now making their curriculum available online, it seems only right that students can continue to glam-up their work and now they can thanks to Dell’s new Design Studio which allows customers to customise the design of their laptop lid. (We say ‘new’ – of course it’s been around in the US for yonks but finally it gets the red carpet treatment in the UK.)

At a Paris press conference, Dell revealed that purchasers of a Studio 15 or 17 laptop will be able to select from over 200 different lid designs. Artists whose work is available include Derek Welch, Dell favourite Mike Ming, and - if you’d like to personalise for a cause - (PRODUCT) RED designs from Joseph Amedokpo, Bruce Mau and Siobhan Gunning – with proceeds from these sales donated to AIDS-related projects in Africa. As of yet, there has been no official line on customisable lids for other models.

However, breaking the mould will of course add to the cost of the default laptop. Choosing a different coloured lid to the standard black lid for a Studio 15 notebook costs an extra £29. For more ornate designs, you’ll be forking out an added £69.

“You can pick from over 200 designs that we’ve commissioned exclusively,” says Michael Tatelman, Dell’s vice president of consumer sales and marketing. He also promised that more designs would be on the way. “You’ll also see various things coming over time that will allow you to associate potentially various music acts or sports teams or other things.” Customers can’t currently add their own designs to laptop lids but this ‘could be’ available in the future.

To try out the Design Studio for yourself, visit www.dell.com/studio