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"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
The work of digital design guru John Maeda as an educator and director of the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab has never before been fully revealed. Seven years of intensive research with gifted students has resulted in incredible advances in digital and interaction design, and many of the programme's graduates are now considered leaders in their field. This book presents the most fascinating work, arranged by themes that apply to today's digital design issues: programmatic space, living information, typography, tools, interaction design and education. Each section also features two essays by leading names in the field of interaction and digital design, such as Casey Reas, David Small, Yogo Nakamura, Joshua Davis and Gillian Crampton-Smith. Red Burns contributes a foreword.
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4 reviews
76 of 79 people found the following review helpful
New Masters of Maeda
22 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Carefully designed book, wish it had more information
2 April 2007
Format:Paperback
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...
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...
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Awesome Book
5 Jun 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had been looking for this book for a while, I like John Maeda's research. My background is in architecture but I enjoy coding.
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