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Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation [Paperback]

John Maeda (Author), Red Burns (Foreword)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Book Description

October 30, 2004

A rich compilation of work by some of the most inventive minds in the field of digital design.

John Maeda, probably the most important digital designer, educator, and artist working today, created a sensation with maeda@media (2000), which documented his complete oeuvre and laid out his belief in the importance of designers understanding the computer as a medium, not just a tool.

Maeda's work as an educator and director of the Aesthetics + Computation Group (ACG) at the MIT Media Lab has largely remained behind the scenes. For seven years, Maeda and his students—several of whom are already internationally celebrated—have created some of the most digitally sophisticated and exciting pieces of design to emerge anywhere. Little of this research has been seen outside the laboratory.

This book presents the most fascinating work produced by the group, arranged into themes that apply to today's design issues: information visualization, digital typography, abstraction, interaction design, and education. Each section also features brief essays by leading names in the field of interaction and digital design—Casey Reas, David Small, Yogo Nakamura, Joshua Davis, and Gillian Crampton-Smith.

Deftly bridging the chasm between art and science, John Maeda, a true pioneer in the digital realm, leads the way to a greater understanding and richness of experience. Over 600 illustrations, most in color

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Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation + Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (Design Briefs) + Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nicholas Negroponte on John Maeda: 'John Maeda deconstructs the digital world with the earned authority of an M.I.T.-trained computer scientist and a card-carrying artist. Being ambidextrous with Eastern and Western cultures, he can see things most of us overlook. The result is a humour and expression that brings out the best in computers and art'"

About the Author

John Maeda is director of the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. Maeda@media, his first major monograph, was published by Thames & Hudson.

Red Burns is chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and the recipient of the 2002 Chrysler Design Award.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Thames & Hudson (October 30, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0500285179
  • ISBN-13: 978-0500285176
  • Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist John Maeda is President of the Rhode Island School of Design and founder of the SIMPLICITY Consortium at the MIT Media Lab. His work has been exhibited in Tokyo, New York, London, and Paris and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Smithsonian Institution National Design Award in the United States, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize in Germany, and the Mainichi Design Prize in Japan.

 

Customer Reviews

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76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars New Masters of Maeda, October 22, 2004
This review is from: Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation (Paperback)
Maeda is a certifiable genius, but his books have gone downhill since his first, "Design by Numbers." That book is an exceptional introduction to computational design, original, and elegant. His next, "Maeda at Media" took many hundreds of pages to sum up Maeda's years a the MIT Media Lab. It was something of an egotistical embarrassment. Maeda, then just in his mid-thirties, included pretty much every experiement and project he'd done to date. Even geniuses need editors.

Now, in "Creative Code" we get a book not really different from the "New Masters of Flash" series that's now in (I think) its third edition. CC is a collection of case studies of work by some very smart people, and some essays about digital media, working methods, and so on. Much of it is great work and pretty. It's rendered pretty lifeless in a printed book, of course, so you'll want to track down this work online to actually check it out.

How valuable will this be to you? Do you need another heavy, sexy design book? If you're really interested in this kind of work, you'll certainly already know about all of these designers, and probably about most of the peices included here. You've probably also read the designers' own blogs or web sites, so you'll know about their methods and interests in much more detail than you get here. (The description's statement that "little of this research has been seen outside the laboratory" is not true.) In that case, you get a book of pretty pictures that probably will sit on your shelf more than on your lap. If you're looking for code samples or detailed technical explanations, you'll be better off looking elsewhere.

It's kind of a shame in the end. He's so talented, I want to see Maeda doing less surveying of the state of interaction design and more genuinely innovative and interesting things. In fact, I'll tell you what's needed: to finish the project he started in DBN, which is to really explain the concept of "coding elegance" (and the creativity behind it). There's a lot in all three books about the aesthetic appeal of well-written computer code, but there's not much about what specifically makes one algorithm more beautiful than another. This algorithmic elegance is really central to Maeda's work; he says that digital designers should appreciate both the coding and the visual/interactive design natures of the medium. The people represented in this book are the ones who'll be able to do that, but it hasn't happened yet.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Carefully designed book, wish it had more information, April 2, 2007
This review is from: Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation (Paperback)
The book is carefully, beautifully designed, it really shines in your bookshelf. Nevertheless, i found it to be lacking more thoughts, ideas - something to fill the void, to make the images meaningful. It fails to inspire, to make you ask questions, to expose the deeper structures and ideas behind the artwork. That's a big "sin" so to say, since maeda is well known for having interesting things to say.

Without real text i think it's just a beautiful book, no more and no less than that. Great for snobs, or for having in your living room...
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Book, June 5, 2010
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This review is from: Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation (Paperback)
I had been looking for this book for a while, I like John Maeda's research. My background is in architecture but I enjoy coding.
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