Digital materials design (DMD) coupled with new manufacturing techniques are emerging technologies that have the potential to revolutionize product realization on a global scale. The Economist magazine likened the emergence of these novel imaging, modelling and manufacturing methods to the start of the third industrial revolution. Companies and laboratories now need to turn their attention to detailed multiscale structure, synthesis, processing, properties, and performance characteristics of the materials (most of them porous) that will fundamentally determine the success or failure of direct customised components.