Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture
Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture is now officially published:
Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture
Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, LUST
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 9781568989372
7 x 8.5 inches (17.8 x 21.6 cm)
Paperback, 176 pages
Chandler and I started the project at the beginning of the summer 2007 with a workshop titled “Form + Code” at the Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles (19 July 2007 from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm). The Dutch design studio LUST was folded in to the team in November of the same year. We developed the book with Chandler and myself primarily curating the images and developing the text and LUST leading the visual communication and layout exploration. The project was taken to some extreme variations as we explored the material. The primary consideration that we wanted the book to be as affordable and widely available as possible drove many of the decisions including the format (a small paperback) and the publisher (Princeton Architectural Press).
The book grew out of two overlapping desires. First, Chandler and I spend much of our lives working with UCLA undergraduates in the Department of Design Media Arts and we’re continuously developing lectures and examples for them. Form+Code was developed to give them a broad understanding of how code is used within the visual arts. Second, after completing Processing: a Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, I had the desire to make a book about the same topic, but from a totally different perspective. That book taught the reader how to program, but it didn’t discuss why it’s an interesting thing for a designer or artist to consider. Form+Code is a non-technical introduction, while Processing: A Programming Handbook is a rigorous technical foundation.
Here’s some text from the formal book proposal to Princeton Architectural Press completed in August 2008:
Form+Code discusses the role of software in visual design, art, and architecture. It hopes to generate interest in creating visual and spatial form with software across diverse fields by focusing on the history, theory, and practice of software in the arts. The book is about one quarter text and three quarters images. It is organized around two parallel narratives: one told through images and captions, and the other through essays with related diagrams and images. This allows the book to be read cover-to-cover or leisurely looked through as a source of inspiration.
The book is divided into seven chapters: What is Code?, Computers and Form, Repetition, Transformation, Parameters, Visualization, and Simulation. The first two chapters set the foundation for the rest of the book by discussing the history of the computer in the arts and how software is used to create form. The five themes of repetition, transformation, parameters, visualization, and simulation are deeply linked to code. Each of these sections begin with an essay to define the territory, continues with images and captions, and concludes with code examples written in a few designer-friendly programming language such as Processing and ActionScript (the code won’t be included in the book, but will be available from the URL www.formandcode.com). Form+Code is not a programming tutorial; its goal is to inspire though the discussion of themes and projects.
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Unlike many other books, the visual design of Form+Code is a close collaboration between the primary text authors (Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams) and the primary visual authors (LUST). The visual layout will be almost conventional, but will include details that illustrate the marriage of code and form. These details will further convey the primary content of the book.
We are patterning the structure of Form+Code closely on Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type. We feel this book is a superb synthesis of text and image; it’s the right amount of content to provide a solid introduction to its subject, while brief enough to make it manageable and affordable. We strive to reach this balance and to appeal to a similar audience of students, educators, and professionals. We’re also highly influenced by Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Artists and Designers, written by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. In a way, Form+Code, is a prequel to this book. The Processing book is a 736 page textbook primarily printed in black and white, but its subject matter is highly visual. Form+Code presents much of the background research for the Processing book in a full-color and image-heavy presentation.
There could be many books written in relation to the topics of form and code. The Form+Code book is written for students, educators, and professionals in the fields of design, art, and architecture. It’s intended to provide a foundation for and/or augment academic courses related to “digital design”, “interactive media”, “computational design”, “media art”, “introduction to computer graphics” “introduction to programming“, and other related areas. The book is also meant to be appealing and appropriate for people outside of academic institutions, but involved in the above mentioned fields. It is equally appropriate for non-specialists who are interested in these areas. The book is very visual, but the text is rigorously researched and provides clear context for the images. It is not a reference book or a technical manual; it is an introduction to a deep topic and therefore will be engaging to read. All content is framed within the context of the arts. The book is intended as a foundation text and there are no prerequisites.
To learn more about the book, please visit the website http://formandcode.com.






