Creative Coding, Basel Academy of Art and Design

The workshop offers a well-founded examination of the design of typefaces through theory and creative practice. The topics covered are Procedure from hand sketches to digital final artwork and form variants, the Latin alphabet, typology of letterforms, font character, font classification, development of our typesetting fonts, optical laws and phenomena, font terminology, etc.

As designers embraced the computer decades ago, the mouse became a crucial tool to implement one’s ideas in the digital domain. From the early 2000s, programming frameworks enabled artists and designers to express themselves and create their own tools, commonly referred to ascreative coding. Since the 2010s, a new era of frameworks has taken advantage of web browsers’ increased speed and capability, utilizing the HTML5 Canvas element as a sandbox for interaction. With the help of one of those frameworks, p5.js, one can quickly get up and running to code motion graphics, interactive visuals for a website, custom tools with GUI elements, and much more! By using dynamic inputs such as mouse movements, random chance, or time of day, one can influence parameters controlling the design of images, shapes, typography, to name just a few. This exciting realm of infinite possibilities, where every rendering can be unique, is what we mean by generative design. In this workshop (intended for both absolute beginners and experienced coders alike), we shall dive right into key functions for generating forms and type, setting them into motion, allowing user interaction to influence them and design our own digital tools for visual communication. In this workflow, we shall explore live coding, using a custom environment, where one sees instantaneous visuals as the code changes. Therefore, we shall have to take it one small step further and make our sketches audio-reactive, just in case you plan to VJ on the weekend.

Ted Davisis a media educator / artist / designer originally from the United States and based in Basel, Switzerland. Since 2010, he teaches interaction design and co-ordinates the UIC/HGK International Master of Design programme within the Institute Digital Communication Environments IDCE, HGK Basel FHNW. His work and teachings explore the volatility of digital media through glitch and reactivating older ‘new media’ through newer programming means. His open-source projects (basil.js, XYscope, P5LIVE, p5.glitch) enable designers to program within Adobe InDesign, render vector graphics on vector displays, collaboratively live code visuals with p5.js, and glitch any media in real-time within the web browser. In 2021, he received the Basel Media Art Prize (Basler Medienkunstpreis) for p5.glitch and was a Processing Foundation Teaching Fellow. With international exhibits, lectures, and workshops, he empowers students to take hold of the computer’s ability to design possibilities beyond that of the hand or mouse. teddavis.org

The continuing education programs are primarily aimed at individuals with an academic degree from a recognized university and relevant professional experience after graduation.Individuals with equivalent qualifications will be admitted if their eligibility for participation is demonstrated by other evidence.

For further questions, please contact the Continuing Education Department, Ralf Michel