I gave a presentation this week at Shenkar College of Design / Interactive Media programme that includes a brief introduction to 'Design Hacking' and Generative Design.
The presentation includes an overview of technical tricks & tweaks for graphic designers using Macs, as well as an introduction of generative tools available for graphic designers & some sample uses of them.
6. Introduction
Interactive design is at the
intersection between design &
technology.
We usually talk about making
things easy.
Instead, let’s talk about making
things beautiful.
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7. Introduction
I’ve heard this from several teachers at Shenkar:
Nowadays, kids already know
all about the creative software
used for design
— all we can do is teach you
how to think.
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8. Introduction
I’ve heard this from several teachers at Shenkar:
Nowadays, kids already know
all about the creative software
used for design
— all we can do is teach you
how to think.
Guy Haviv meetgooya.com @stupidapp
9. Introduction
In design school I...
Trained my eyes
Learned how to think
Learned a craft
Today we’ll explore one (new)
aspect of digital craft.
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13. Introduction
Why are we talking about this?
diving into the digital craft can
give digital designers an edge
over their print colleagues.
And most of this stuff is super
useful for print design as well.
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15. Ideas are fluid
Ideas are fluid.
they can be mixed & matched
like design elements.
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16. Ideas are fluid
Vered Mosenzon calls this
‘spinning ideas’.
IDEO developed Method Cards
to support idea generation
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28. Design Hacking
Illustrator is an incredible app -
it has forward compatibility.
Each .ai file actually has a hidden .pdf file inside.
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29. Design Hacking
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.ai + pdf bundles enable QuickLook on .ai files.
31. Design Hacking
The Finder has a trick called
bundles.
Bundles are folders that act like
single files.
They hide some good stuff inside.
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32. Design Hacking
.app files are bundles.
Let’s look at an example.
iWork files used to be bundles.
Let’s extract some media from a .keynote document
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34. Design Hacking
When you export a file to PDF,
the relevant fonts are being
embedded into that PDF.
And you can extract them.
Get FontForge to try this stuff out.
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49. Generative Design
generative tool #01
Core Image Fun House
Get it when downloading Xcode:
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html
Mac only
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50. Generative Design
Core Image Fun House
Take an image and stack a
bunch of live pixel effects on top
of it.
(originally made as a technology exploration tool)
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53. Generative Design
generative tool #02
Quartz Composer
Get it when downloading Xcode:
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html
Mac only
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56. Generative Design
Quartz Composer files are
called Compositions.
They are used on the Mac as:
Screen savers
iTunes visualizers
Keynote plugins
They are also playable on any Mac with Quicktime.
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57. Generative Design
I used Quartz Composer to create an interactive poster.
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64. Generative Design
NodeBox
NodeBox is fucking awesome.
You write Python code &
generate vector graphics.
Copy as PDF to Illustrator to continue tweaking.
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70. Generative Design
generative tool #05
Scriptographer
Illustrator scripting plugin
scriptographer.org
Mac & PC
Open source
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71. Generative Design
Scriptographer is an interactive
scripting environment for
Illustrator.
It adds a palette with scripts and a few tools - all of
which can be edited and manipulated.
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74. Generative Design
What happens if you output an
Illustrator file to .ps, and then
play with random numbers
inside?
And then open the .ps with Adobe Distiller to make
it a PDF to view the results?
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75. Generative Design
I used postscript hacking mainly to distort shapes
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76. Generative Design
I used postscript hacking mainly to distort shapes
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79. Generative Design
Don’t treat all of this
as merely eye candy.
Always attempt to
marry code & concept.
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80. Summary
thank you.
Slides available on:
http://tinyurl.com/designhacking
There’s a lot more to learn / explore:
http://www.creativeapplications.net/
http://www.generatorx.no/category/tools-code/
Guy Haviv meetgooya.com @stupidapp