1From Pencil to Code

I am a member of Generation X, a label that I always thought was more reminiscent of an operating system than an actual social category. At the end of the 1980s, I was training for my first job as a phototypesetter (Schriftsetzer) before moving on to graphic design. In 1984, a new type of machine, the Macintosh 512k, made its entry into our home. We were just the twelfth clients in the Canton of Ticino to acquire such a novelty, and no one at the time could have imagined the impact it would have on our society. I owe my first typographical compositions to the application Mac Paint I1 and my creative eye as a graphic designer was formed by the esthetics of Susan Kare’s bitmaps2. This familiarity with technology has always been a part of my personal practice as a graphic designer. Already, at the beginning of my career, I had explored the impact of creative coding in projects such as the visual identity of the Camerata de Lausanne (2011), which included a software that generated forms by physicist Ernst Chladni, or the generative typographical identity project for the furniture design firm DADADUM (2012), which was scripted for InDesign using JavaScript. These experiences were the fruit of an encounter with the creative coder Mathieu Rudaz who has helped me turn my ideas into reality.

In 2017, my interest in technology led to the subsequent cofounding, with Pierre-Alain Giesser, Fabrice Pétignat and David Héritier, of a lab in which one could experiment with new technologies at the Center for Future Publishing, based at HEAD-Genève3. It was within this space that I had the opportunity of researching the inherent potential of applying algorithms to print publishing. For example, we explored the possibilities of autonomous page layout with the Omnirama magazine project (2017). We used search bots and algorithms to peruse the Web, downloading and laying out images and texts based on certain keywords. The Self-Assembling Book Project (2017) was an investigation into the machine learning potential of Google Vision, resulting in the creation of an autonomously created book which itself decides upon the sequence of images and does the page layout automatically. These initial projects had been made possible with the help and collaboration of creative coder, typographer and researcher Roberto Arista. The tools he developed were a key component in their realization. Other projects quickly came into being at the Center, such as Perpetual Printing, the results of which were exhibited in 2018 at the Triennale de l’Art Imprimé Contemporain at the Musée du Locle, and again in 2019 at the Porto Design Biennale, as well as the Weltformat Graphic Design Festival in Lucerne.

These moments in my career inspired me to delve deeper into these new methods of working, and consequently I began to perceive a real potential for evolution throughout the panorama of graphic design practices. However, I also observed a gap between what was happening in some cutting-edge studios and what was being taught in the graphic design departments of major art schools. This led to an examination of the questions surrounding creative coding and the beginning of this research project. It truly began to take shape after intense discussions with my team: graphic designer and professor Rob van Leijsen, graphic designer and creative coder David Héritier, anthropologist Nicolas Nova, graphic designer Daniel Sciboz, researcher and professor Anthony Masure, translator and editor Aviva Cashmira Kakar. However, before I jump into the core of the research, I would like to situate this rapidly evolving practice within a historical and geographic context.

Over the course of the last fifty years, the parallel evolution of graphic arts and information technology has undergone three major phases (Moggridge, 2009 and Reas & Fry, 2007). The first, which took place in the 1960s, saw the introduction of integrated circuits, an essential component of modern information technology, and the future microcomputer, which heralded the emerging field of computer graphics, a term coined by Verne Hudson and William Fetter of the Boeing Company. At the time, these practices remained “artisanal,” until they were upended in the 1980s by the advent of the personal computer. This led to the era of DTP (desktop publishing), and graphic design software that was WYSIWYG, an acronym for “What You See Is What You Get,” i.e. the ability to see onscreen an exact vision of what the printed output would look like. Pioneering software included Mac Paint, Aldus PageMaker, Freehand and Quark Xpress. Nevertheless, even after the arrival of this first standard software in the field, virtual practice was still based on the gestures of the human hand. For instance, to draw a line you used a virtual paintbrush, to create a composition, you would virtually move screen objects around by hand with a new tool, referred to as a mouse. Another major change occurred in the 2000s with the arrival of the smartphone and the World Wide Web, which made the world more social and participative. On the crest of this third wave came a new phenomenon: graphic designers began to program themselves, or to collaborate with programmers to create a series of new tools of their trade.

This research project explores the latter, that is to say the appropriation of programming language by the graphic designers of the post-digital era. While the term “post-digital” was coined in 1998 by Nicholas Negroponte, founded of the famed MIT Media Lab, where designer John Maeda officiated, and has been used by Kim Cascone, as well as researcher, artist and editor Alessandro Ludovico4. It has also recently been used by graphic designers to refer to creative practices based upon the growing utilization of programming, software and ad hoc algorithms. Consequently, in the wake of Ludovico’s theories that explore the post-digital mutations occurring within the publishing world, the intent of our project on graphic design in the post-digital era is to bring together and analyze the community of graphic designers who create their own tools using creative coding. The result are tools that are not subject to what is produced by major companies, and which fill particular creative needs. Consequently, the objective of this research is to obtain a better understanding and context of the various issues inherent in this movement in full effervescence, and to offer a survey with generational potential that will provide an overview of the most innovative “augmented” design practices.

We therefore set out to do some fieldwork, speaking with graphic designers who were active in the realms of typography, publishing and the creation of visual identities. We posited the following questions as part of our investigation: to what degree has “augmented” graphic design based itself upon software to improve quality and performance? What programming skills will henceforth be necessary for the practice of graphic design? In what ways will these coding practices confront the established visual codes of graphic design? How will the DIY coding attitude or technical “bricolage” work within a studio? Can we speak of a new movement in graphic practice? Where is graphic design headed in the digital era, when the world is a global village? And, last but not least, if graphic design was, at its origins, artisanal and artistic, could coding become the tool of a new type of craftsmanship? Silvio Lorusso’s essay (p. 25) addresses these points and provides key perspectives on these readings.

The first associations between graphic design and programming took place within a Swiss context, as attested by the seminal work of graphic designer Karl Gerstner, Designing Programmes5. In fact, as early as 1964, Gerstner theorized the use of programming a logical-algorithmic system to create a visual solution, such as advertising or posters, for a graphical project. Thus, well before the personal computer entered the home, he had already begun to anticipate a new way of conceptualizing such things. Moreover, in 1982, Muriel Cooper, the iconic graphic designer and doyenne of the MIT Press, was inspired by this groundbreaking work when she created the Information Landscapes Project, as well as when she cofounded the Visible Language Workshop with Ron McNeil at the MIT Media Lab, thus establishing herself as the pioneer of algorithmic page layout6. As of 2001, Swiss designer Jürg Lehni developed a project whose aim was to increase the generative potential of the Adobe Illustrator software: the Scriptographer project resulted in a plug-in that enabled one to program directly in JavaScript within the Adobe Illustrator application in order to obtain forms that otherwise would not have been possible to generate within the original parameters of the software, and which would have been too complex to execute manually. This enabled a designer to extend functionality in order to augment their creative potential. Scriptographer went on to become the subject of an HES-SO (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland) research project at ECAL (Ecole Cantonale de Lausanne) from 2009–2011 and Lehni continued his work in collaboration with Jonathan Puckey. One of the most audacious figures in the history of graphic design and the use of digital tools is American designer and designer April Greiman, who studied at the Basel School of Design. Greiman was a pupil of Wolfgang Weingart, the iconic rebel of the Swiss School established by Armin Hoffmann and Emil Ruder. She adapted Weingart’s precepts and the Swiss International Style to the new functionalities of desktop publishing (DTP) software, and helped spark the New Wave in graphic design in California, which resulted in the reevaluation of software tools as a basis for graphical creation. John Maeda, who took over Cooper’s VLW lab in the 1990s, formulated a method of teaching “creative programming” for designers: the result was Design By Numbers7. This was a seminal moment in the evolution of creative coding.

In the 2000s, designers began to adapt or create their own tools to explore the new possibilities that technology offered them. Even more interesting was the fact that they went so far as to challenge the monopolies of commercial and proprietary software by creating their own. In 2001, Maeda’s students, Casey Reas (see p. A.R 321) and Ben Fry, launched an open-source software called Processing, based upon the methods formulated by their mentor8. Processing gave designers the possibility of programming their own tools, based upon an intuitive interface that was easy to use, to facilitate the creation of visuals.

Despite the partial relegation of graphic design to the digital realm, physical objects such as books are in no way endangered by the advent of digital. This conviction led Ludovico to advance the idea that the relationship between analogical (atomic) media and its digital alter ego (the bit) will lead to a hybridization and multiplication of editorial possibilities in his seminal work Post-Digital Print9. Our intent is to provide a current overview of this from the respective perspectives of typeface design, editorial design, and the creation of visual identities.

Today, one of the most innovative projects in creative coding from an educational standpoint can be found at the School for Computational Poetry (SFCP)10, a private school in New York City that is continuing the work initiated by Muriel Cooper and John Maeda at the MIT Media Lab11. The intent of this program is to provide an introduction to DIY programming for creative purposes for both graphic designers and artists. Its cofounder, Zachary Lieberman (see p. A.N 270), is also the co-creator (with Theodore Watson and Arturo Castro) of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.12

A bit closer to home, one can cite the exhibition Moving Poster, conceived in 2016 by Lucerne-based graphic designer and curator Josh Schaub13. It combines posters with animated graphics, and questions the proliferation of advertising screens in urban spaces and the ubiquitous use of smartphones. Three years later, Studio Dumbar organized the DEMO (Design in Motion) Festival, the first festival devoted to animated posters at the Centraal Station in Amsterdam. This festival showed the vibrancy of the international scene in this new method of working with type onscreen. The identity of the festival, a unique animation coded by Sander Sturing and Stan Haanappel (p. A.U 365), is, in and of itself, already a manifesto of sorts for this new way of working.

In summary, the intent of Graphic Design in the Post-Digital Age is to explore the field of graphic practice enhanced by code in an empirical manner in order to provide an overall perspective, something that has yet to be done. Our project will map out practices by providing a forum for those who have created them and go on to situate the issues raised in a critical manner.

2A Survey of Coders

Our research focuses on practice, and we deliberately decided to select as participants designers and studios that were actively involved with the commercial production of graphic design and type design, by way of editorial graphics and visual identities. Over the course of our research, we decided to focus upon the Swiss and European spheres of practice, but we also wished to maintain the historical link perpetuated by the American designers who pioneered creative coding platforms such as Processing or openFrameworks. These exceptions consist of two artist-coders, Lieberman, and Reas, both of whom are active on the international scene and who are deeply committed to creative coding—both its dissemination, as well as on an educational level.

The results of our research have been distilled into a series of interviews that have been compiled in both an experimental publication and an Internet platform. Our intent is that they be viewed as tools to guide and inspire institutions at the cutting edge of graphic design education, such as HEAD-Genève, as well as other researchers or practitioners involved in this area. We also wanted to explore the economic impact of these new practices in order to assess the scalable potential in terms of the workflow of graphic designers, as well as ways in which creative coding can be monetized as a graphic solution in certain phases of production.

During our interviews, we looked at the ways in which skills were acquired, an understanding of the training participants received, as well as the autodidactic path chosen by some, made possible by the availability of online resources. We also examined their points of reference as well as their technical and artistic influences, their studio practice and how they encompass creation and programming in order to better situate their activity within the context of the post-digital era. Finally, we questioned the ways in which participants shared their acquired knowledge and skills, since many of them are active educators or disseminators of knowledge through the creation of online open-source resources.

3Qualitative Methodology

Our working group is mostly made up of active practitioners in the field. As a result, we wanted to focus upon the aspect of practice. We have no scientific pretensions, nevertheless we wished to include an academic advisor in the project. Nicolas Nova, an anthropologist working with issues of technology, assisted us in formulating our methodology. We were definitely not interested in pursing a scientific approach in which we would gather thousands of statistics and tons of data in order to postulate theories or formulations, but rather to examine the nuances inherent in this field and seek out criteria to determine quality. It is for this reason that we developed a set of interviews with open questions but a clear and precise agenda. The intent behind the nuanced nature of the interviews was to provide a space for exploration even as we guided the participants through questions of key importance to our research. The core of the work in terms of the evaluation and editing of the interviews, with a view to retaining only the information pertinent to the subject at hand was performed by Rob van Leijsen, David Héritier, Aviva Cashmira Kakar and myself. As we have said, a graphic designer can encounter difficulties when trying to establish general rules or theories. Still, a more academic approach remains necessary in order to scientifically formulate a theory. Nevertheless, a designer’s strength resides in relating skills and acquiring a mastery in the field of their chosen practice. It is for this reason that we decided to widen the scope of our research to encompass mediums of dissemination. Our research team decided to give carte blanche to the Bern-based studio Johnson / Kingston because of their hybrid expertise in both digital and traditional graphic design, but above all because of their approach to creative coding, which consists of a search for a visual code that is both experimental and exploratory. Our publication as a result became a field of exploration where we were able to experiment with the latest technologies and test our hypotheses, even as we lent shape to new narratives. Rob van Leijsen was the presiding presence behind our collaboration. Ivan Weiss, Michael Kryenbühl and Massimiliano Audretsch of Johnson / Kingston conceived the book as a reversible eight-inch floppy disk with an A-side and a B-side. The first part contains a more academic account of our research, while the other is an exploration of the multiple possibilities, a field of experimentation for machine learning (ML) where algorithms select, rewrite and reformulate texts based on conceptual “Sessions.”

Johnson / Kingston explored a variety of questions: How can an algorithm conduct an interview? What can an algorithm understand in a given text? What new interpretations can the reading of a text generated by automation provide? How can different approaches to a text be reformulated? Technically, this publication is based upon the classic Latex technology of Donald Knuth and is related to the contemporary technology of machine learning. Each paragraph has been analyzed through machine learning14, and, after a source in Latex is created thanks to a PHP interface, a PDF is generated15. Additional commentaries and a portion of the glossary have also been generated by the same process. Sandwiched between the A- and B-sides lies a more “visual” section, Part X, which features a sampling of the works of the various contributors, offering a means by which one can familiarize oneself with this new way of creating graphics, as well as an overview of the esthetics and languages endemic to this new medium.

4An Overview of Results

We can certainly conclude that creative coding is well and truly a global movement (see Lieberman and Reas) in terms of artistic creation. As far as commissioned graphic design work is concerned, this activity is still more of a niche, albeit one with a clear and influential presence that is expanding in the areas we examined. What also emerged was that, the more that graphic designers moved into the production of works related to digital media, such as website design (Yehwan Song, p. A.T 355), or onscreen digital advertising (Studio Dumbar), the more central creative coding has become to the profession. Two major trends that have clearly emerged in graphic design are, on the one hand, the introduction of platforms such as Processing and openFrameworks into more widespread use—initially these programs had been used mostly by media artists. On the other hand, there is the design of custom tools, often open-source, coded in JavaScript, PHP, or other languages. Also of great importance, are other models, such as p5.js16 and Paper.js which use JavaScript directly online, making the field more interconnected and multiplatform. Finally there is also the work of type designers and coders (such as the Van Bloklands, pp. A.B 61, A.C 75) who have created powerful tools such as DrawBot, a free application which enables you to generate graphics using simple scripts written in Python.

The fundamental notion, often iterated during this project, of creative coding and sketching is that it is not to be compared with engineering practice. Creative coding consists of the “sketching” out of an idea, and its raison d’être is providing a solution to a given design problem. It is probably not in its nature to be scalable, but rather to resolve the specific challenges of a given communication project or visual problem. Consequently, creative coding is inherently more “design” and less “engineering” (see Petr Van Blokland), which makes it adapted for dealing with specific or systemic needs that arise. It remains clear that, in order to develop tools that can compete with commercial applications such as those created by Adobe or Quark, the economics remain the main challenge. Currently, clients do not systematically fund the develop- ment of a given tool, even if they are often interested in it. Accordingly, a designer must find another way to absorb the costs of development. This is probably the reason that so many tools have been developed under the open-source model, with an entire community participating in development. The result is a methodology rich in a variety of hybrid approaches incorporating both platforms and languages, even making use of different media such as software native to smartphones (see Eurostandard, p. A.G 149, Studio Dumbar). Other practitioners work with databases stored on the cloud in order to rework the data on a specific project such as a publication or a website (see Johnson / Kingston, Tancrède Ottiger pp. A.L 221, A.P 299). It is also clear that young and up-and-coming graphic designers are very interested in creative coding (see Luuse, Sarah Garcin, Emilie Pillet, Eurostandard, Dinamo, pp. A.O 287, A.I 177, A.Q 313, A.G 149, A.F 133). Opening up post-digital practices has also resulted in increased inclusivity in an arena that was long considered a man’s world. One great example is Loraine Furter’s collective, Bye Bye Binary, which works to further inclusiveness, as well as the aforementioned Visible Language Workshop founded by Muriel Cooper.

In terms of education, we also learned that many creative coders are autodidacts who make use of online resources such as YouTube tutorials or GitHub. This also underlines the low profile of creative coding in educational institutions. Generally speaking, coding is taught at the Master level, and in media and interaction design courses but should be available more frequently at the undergraduate level. As a result, we have seen that increased curricular development is taking place in that area in both French and American schools as a response to the demand in the field, although it remains a slow process (see Garcin and Reas).

In conclusion, the notion of creative coding as an artisanal activity was often advanced, defining it as a sort of extension of the artistic practice of a graphic designer, who is shaping communication, and creating typographical compositions using their intellectual and emotional skills through creative coding.

5Visions of the Future

While the interconnected nature of the media world continues to evolve at quantum speed, the profession of graphic design is taking its time when it comes to shifting paradigms. The discipline is still very anchored in traditional approaches, such as the conceptual approach, common in British and American schools, or the Swiss tradition of working towards achieving a high degree of craftsmanship and typographical mastery. In the future, it is hoped that institutions focused on graphic design will commit more solidly to creative coding. In a field such as this, which is undergoing a major metamorphosis, with unemployment rates out of university approaching 7.8%, and difficulties generating wealth, the potential of advanced technologies such as machine learning represents a major potential for new opportunities17. We would like to see the discipline moving into a more forward vision of things, freeing themselves from the constraints of former paradigms, which are celebrated through models of support and distribution such as the The Most Beautiful Swiss Books and 100 Beste Plakate awards. In Switzerland, changes are already visible. The illustrious printer Uldry, which has produced the works of icons of graphic design such as Max Bill, as well as contemporaries like Jiri Oplatek, have formally announced that they have decided to cease their practice of silkscreen printing in favor of digital printing. The major Swiss-French weekly L’Hebdo sadly closed its doors in 2017, right before the transition of print to digital. The rise of onscreen advertising and the power and ubiquity of the new generation of smartphones, along with the emergence of blockchain technology, have led us to reexamine many areas of our traditional practices and our areas of expertise as graphic designers. Nevertheless, there is a great potential in these new practices augmented by algorithms and creative coding and this research project has shown its quality, providing clear examples from graphic designers active on the commercial level. It is to be hoped that we will see the same impetus in Switzerland that we have seen in France, and eventually see creative coding being taught relatively widely at the undergraduate level, as well as encouraging more exchanges and collaborative projects at both the undergraduate and master levels to circulate savoir-faire in a more horizontal level in the various spheres of the profession.

This is not a call to create a new generation of new technicians, but rather to provide intellectual bases so that future generations can interact with these new technologies and their actors, and know how to understand and incorporate them into a creative practice, as well as how to generate economic capital to guarantee a secure future. It is our hope that this research will provide a greater understanding of the challenges faced by educational institutions and inspire graphic designers to take a fresh look at their own creative practices.