Product design is an active area of research. In a top-down approach to product design, the required product properties dictate product development from the very basic choice of the functional material to use for a defined task LIP to the processing required to render the material in a suitable form. This article focuses on processing crystalline solids with a particular field of application in mind and shows how process conditions can be used both to generate a material with particular properties and to tailor these properties. The examples selected are biased towards novel pharmaceutical applications; the principles of the processes and the resulting product properties discussed can, however, be transferred to other areas where materials with similar functions are required. The case studies presented pertain to in situ coating of solid particles (cases I and 2) with a crystalline coating of a different chemical nature, to freeze casting for generating porous particles and, finally, to the potential for exploiting phase transformations to generate tubular crystalline solids that can function as micro-delivery devices for other materials. Potential advantages of all four processing techniques are the delivery of well-defined products with tailored properties that can be controlled by judicious choice of the process conditions.