We acknowledge the Gadigal people, traditional owners of the unceded land on which this campus sits.

But why do I, a designer , need to code?

We are all unicorns

Designers surveyed in the Design In Tech Report (John Maeda, 2015) found that 1/2 of all design professionals can code to some degree and that 93.5% of designers say that coding is essential or valuable.

Be a designer who codes

Using code as a prototyping tool you can test almost any of your ideas, from a single page website to an interactive web app. You can take a design from nothing to something all by yourself.

Code as art

Generative design is art that, at least in part, makes itself.

We call these algorithmic processes and they can assist in the creation of designs that are difficult to illustrate or even conceive. We can also use these algorithims to create simple animations or iterations of a design as we search for something we like.

Lady Lovelace's Objection

"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." -- Ada Lovelace, 1842.

Lady Lovelace's Objection

"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." -- Ada Lovelace, 1842.

"Machines take me by surprise with great frequency." -- Alan Turing, 1950.

Harold Cohen and Aaron

Artists have been exploring code as a tool to make art for a long time. Pictured on the left is a painting called Meeting On Gauguin's Beach, 1988 by Harold Cohen and Aaron.

Aaron is a robot

Harold Cohen initially developed Aaron to create outlines of artworks that he would color and finish. Later iterations of Aaron were able to choose colors on their own and form human figures. As this system became more sophisticated Aaron transitioned from a tool to a creative partner for Harold.

Aaron

This system he built was able to make a distinction between foreground, background, human figure, and facial expression. With this ability, Aaron was tasked with making key visual composition choices in each artwork. Note that the most complex artworks were generated in the early 1990s far ahead of its time and shocking that it was drawn primarily by a robot.

Aaron

We will be taking inspiration from historical examples of computer based art and using them to better understand how to program.

Modern Examples of Art and Code

Algorithmic design can be found everywhere, here are few modern examples of how "creative coding" has lead to new and amazing works of art and design.

JavaScript via P5.js

JavaScript is a scripting language that drives the internet. We are going to be learning this through the lens of P5.js over the next 13 weeks.

P5.js is a creative coding library which allows beginner programmers to quickly draw shapes to screen. It's what were going to use as a starting point for programming.