Design By Numbers (Paperback)

by John Maeda (Author), Paola Antonelli (Foreword) "1 BEGIN Our forefathers at the Bauhaus, Ulm, and many other key centers for design education around the world labored to create a sense of..." (more)
Key Phrases: computational media design, computational medium, transfer dot, Box Set, Command Rectangle, Number Distance (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"John Maeda shows graphic designers how to step back a level and create their own digital tools. His elegant book could change the way we think about graphic design; I hope it will."
—William J. Mitchell, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, MIT

Product Description
Most art and technology projects pair artists with engineers or scientists: the artist has the conception, and the technical person provides the know-how. John Maeda is an artist and a computer scientist, and he views the computer not as a substitute for brush and paint but as an artistic medium in its own right. Design By Numbers is a reader-friendly tutorial on both the philosophy and nuts-and-bolts techniques of programming for artists. Practicing what he preaches, Maeda composed Design By Numbers using a computational process he developed specifically for the book. He introduces a programming language and development environment, available on the Web, which can be freely downloaded or run directly within any JAVA-enabled Web browser. Appropriately, the new language is called DBN (for "design by numbers"). Designed for "visual" people--artists, designers, anyone who likes to pick up a pencil and doodle--DBN has very few commands and consists of elements resembling those of many other languages, such as LISP, LOGO, C/JAVA, and BASIC. Throughout the book Maeda emphasizes the importance--and delights--of understanding the motivation behind computer programming, as well as the many wonders that emerge from well-written programs. Sympathetic to the "mathematically challenged," he places minimal emphasis on mathematics in the first half of the book. Because computation is inherently mathematical, the books second half uses intermediate mathematical concepts that generally do not go beyond high-school algebra. The reader who masters the skills so clearly set out by Maeda will be ready to exploit the true character of digital media design.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262632446
• ISBN-13: 978-0262632447
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 9.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #304,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Design and Programming Tutorial, August 1, 1999

By	Simulacrum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design By Numbers (Hardcover)

This is both a book and an interactive tutorial in computer programming for artists and designers. While it is now common for printed books to include CD-ROMs, this one has instead its own website where free software, called DBN (Design By Numbers), can be accessed, downloaded, and used by anyone with a JAVA-enabled browser. Using the book and website in combination, it is the intention of the author (who heads the Aesthetics and Computation group at MIT) that designers, even those who are "mathematically challenged," might quickly acquire "the skills necessary to write computer programs that are themselves visual expressions," and, as a consequence, "come to appreciate the computer's unique role in the future of the arts and design." Unfortunately, the layout of the book is so unexceptional (particularly the dust jacket, which might have been used in a powerful way) that it is unlikely to convert any graphic designers, who create far more complex forms intuitively, with little or no knowledge of programming. As a result, it may only reach those who need it least, meaning those who are already straddling the line between art and mathematics, between graphic design and computer programming. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You know, it's strange...., November 29, 2000

By	Rick Mullarky (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design By Numbers (Hardcover)

I like this book a lot, but the thing I like best has nothing to do with programming --- It's the attention to typographic detail.

Beautiful grey/black combinations, meticulous rags, tiny illustrations and a very interesting grid make this the best looking book with sample code I've ever seen.

It's a book about method, so if it's Maeda's work you want to see, I assume his next book is the one you want.

It is a beautifully made basic primer which articulates the virtues of a new technology for design-- it has a proud place on my shelf next to 'Grid Systems' by Josef Mueller-Brockmann and 'Typography' by Emil Ruder.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inventive and original achievement, July 6, 1999

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

This review is from: Design By Numbers (Hardcover)

Not meant to teach a useful programming language, as the last reviewer seems to have expected, but a critical innovation in the way design is taught. Design by Numbers is meant to teach digital designers the language their tools already speak, but which students rarely learn. There's compromises for both programmers and deisgners here--and that it's slow in your browser is certainly not an important one--but this book offers insights for both camps. It's also quite attractive and contains more information than you'd expect on a quick flip through.