Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation (Paperback)

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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'"

Product Description

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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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (October 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500285179
• ISBN-13: 978-0500285176
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 8.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #565,378 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars New Masters of Maeda, October 22, 2004

By	Andrew Otwell "heyotwell" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Carefully designed book, wish it had more information, April 2, 2007

By	Nicolas Raddatz "Media Artist" (Montevideo, Uruguay) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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...

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerfull secret message, November 18, 2006

By	Mr Cesar Harada "eager student" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

I read 7 times in a row this book to analyse it in depth. It is fun and very exciting to read as you go through dozen of highly interesting projects. My analysis of this book brought me to the conclusion that it also contains a vision, a powerfull secret message. It convinced me we are builders of a new era, a "renaissance" of human knowledge and activities with computational technologies.
Within a friendly package, i got intimately convinced by the faithfull project of John Maeda, and I'm now driving my research having in mind the many accessible yet visionary projects i have seen in this book. I'm applying to MIT Media Lab and i want to change the world, with my vision.