Design By Numbers


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I created Design By Numbers during in a time when getting artists and designers to program the computer was just beginning to become in vogue. I spent most of the earlier half of the 1990's espousing the importance of getting beyond the tools, and into the medium of programming itself. Working on Design By Numbers was a kind of revelation for me. I realized how uninteresting it is to program. The actual point of the book was to get more non-programmers to program as a means to hopefully realize how boring programming can be. And then to re-imagine, re-envision, and realize a superior form of programming for the non-mathematically inclined.

The then voluntary caretakers of the DBN system, Ben Fry and Casey Reas felt that they had the right designs for a new solution. It is called "Processing." And it is still going strong today in a way that continues to pleasantly astound me.

There are no new developments around DBN for now, but I expect it will come back within the next few years ... to be reborn into a new system we have under development in my research group at MIT.

All referral proceeds for this book are pledged to:
unicef, project bread, whoi + live strong.

   
 

Copyright 2005, John Maeda.