John Maeda

John Antonelli

John (Global Head Maeda, Computational Design and Inclusion Automattic Inc.)

Ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design are revealed in a guide that explores the question of how improvement can be defined so that it does not always mean adding something more.

The Laws of Simplicity

Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We're rebelling against technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals. Apple made simplicity hip. But sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox- we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design-guidelines for needing less and actually getting more. Maeda-a professor in MIT's Media Lab and a world-renowned graphic designer-explores the question of how we can redefine the notion of "improved" so that it doesn't always mean something more, something added on.

John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future. Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed and endlessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous. Take the seemingly instant transformation of Microsoft's chatbot into a hate-spewing racist, or how crime-predicting algorithms reinforce racial bias. How To Speak Machine provides a coherent framework for today's product designers, business leaders and policymakers to grasp this brave new world. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience from engineering to computer science to design, Maeda shows how businesses and individuals can identify opportunities afforded by technology to make world-changing and inclusive products while avoiding the pitfalls inherent to the medium.

Laws of Design for a Computational Age

How to Speak Machine

Most art and technology projects pair artists with engineers or scientists: the artist has the conception, and the technical person provides the know-how. John Maeda is an artist and a computer scientist, and he views the computer not as a substitute for brush and paint but as an artistic medium in its own right. Design By Numbers is a reader-friendly tutorial on both the philosophy and nuts-and-bolts techniques of programming for artists. Practicing what he preaches, Maeda composed Design By Numbers using a computational process he developed specifically for the book. He introduces a programming language and development environment, available on the Web, which can be freely downloaded or run directly within any JAVA-enabled Web browser. Appropriately, the new language is called DBN (for "design by numbers"). Designed for "visual" people -- artists, designers, anyone who likes to pick up a pencil and doodle -- DBN has very few commands and consists of elements resembling those of many other languages, such as LISP, LOGO, C/JAVA, and BASIC. Throughout the book, Maeda emphasizes the importance -- and delights -- of understanding the motivation behind computer programming, as well as the many wonders that emerge from well-written programs. Sympathetic to the "mathematically challenged," he places minimal emphasis on mathematics in the first half of the book. Because computation is inherently mathematical, the book's second half uses intermediate mathematical concepts that generally do not go beyond high-school algebra. The reader who masters the skills so clearly set out by Maeda will be ready to exploit the true character of digital media design.

Design by Numbers

The creator of the designer website, maeda@media, explores the computer as an artistic medium, recounting how his students and he have rendered some of the most digitally sophisticated pieces of design in modern history, in a compilation that showcases some of the ACG's key achievements in the fields of digital typography, interaction design, education, and more. Original.

Creative Code

Lessons for a new generation of leaders on teamwork, meetings, conversations, free food, social media, apologizing, and other topics. When designer and computer scientist John Maeda was tapped to be president of the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, he had to learn how to be a leader quickly. He had to transform himself from a tenured professor—with a love of argument for argument's sake and the freedom to experiment—into the head of a hierarchical organization. The professor is free to speak his mind against “the man.” The college president is “the man.” Maeda has had to teach himself, through trial and error, about leadership. In Redesigning Leadership, he shares his learning process. Maeda, writing as an artist and designer, a technologist, and a professor, discusses intuition and risk-taking, “transparency,” and all the things that a conversation can do that an email can't. In his transition from MIT to RISD he finds that the most effective way to pull people together is not social networking but free food. Leading a team? The best way for a leader to leverage the collective power of a team is to reveal his or her own humanity. Asked if he has stopped designing, Maeda replied (via Twitter) “I'm designing how to talk about/with/for our #RISD community.” Maeda's creative nature makes him a different sort of leader—one who prizes experimentation, honest critique, and learning as you go. With Redesigning Leadership, he uses his experience to reveal a new model of leadership for the next generation of leaders.

Redesigning Leadership

Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us

Le leggi della semplicità

Pioneer in the world of the graphic arts, John Maeda is an artist and a highly qualified engineer. This volume showcases the genius of his work, revolutionary and yet at the same time flat-out beautiful as Esquire magazine described it in 1999.

Maeda@media

Rosanne Somerson

Mara Hermano

Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice

Art of Critical Making

"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 humor and expression that brings out the best in computers and art."--Nicholas Negroponte John Maeda is one of the world's leading experimental graphic designers and is quickly becoming a digital culture icon. His early preoccupation with the intersection of computer programming and digital art has resulted in a fascinating, interactive, and stunningly beautiful collection of work. Maeda has pioneered many of the key expressive elements that are prevalent on the web today. Among his most well-known works are The Reactive Square, which features a simple black square on a computer screen that changes shape if one yells at it, and Time Paint, in which paint flies across the screen. He has created innovative, interactive calendars, digital services, and advertisements for companies such as Sony, Shiseido, and Absolut Vodka. This is the first publication to present a complete overview of Maeda's work and philosophy. A glorious visual exploration of ideas and graphic form, Maeda @ Media takes you through Maeda's beginnings in early computerized printouts, to his reactive graphics on CD-ROM, to his dynamic experiments on the web, to his pedagogical approach to digital visual art, and finally to his overarching quest to understand the very nature of the relationship between technology and creativity. Six thematic chapters provide an overview of his entire career and research. But this is not just a catalog of older work: interspersed between each chapter is a new visual essay that has been created exclusively for this publication to underline each of the major themes. Coming together in a massive 480 pages, printed in a dazzling array of color combinations on three different kinds of paper, the result is a manifesto, a finely crafted manual and inspiration sourcebook all in one. With over 1000 illustrations.

Maeda @ Media

Comment se simplifier la vie à l'ère du numérique, dans un monde où tout, à commencer par les objets, est de plus en plus complexe ? Aller à l'essentiel, avoir de l'organisation, atténuer les pertes de temps, ne pas mésestimer les émotions, et même... faire confiance aux autres, telles sont quelques-unes des dix lois de la simplicité que le célèbre John Maeda explore dans ce petit guide malicieux et concret. [Source : 4e de couv.]

De la simplicité

Kyna Leski

The stages of the creative process -- from "unlearning" to beginning again -- seen through examples from the practice of artists, architects, poets, inventors, scientists, and others.

A Storm's Eye View

The Storm of Creativity

R. Alexander Bentley

Michael J. O'Brien

How culture evolves through algorithms rather than knowledge inherited from ancestors.

From Ancestors to Algorithms

The Acceleration of Cultural Change

Zeynep Kökkaya Chalar

Tasarım, teknoloji, iş yaşamında başarı için basitlik kanunları

Ivan Chermayeff

'Identity: Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv' showcases a body of work spanning 60 years from the seminal New York design firm founded in 1957 by Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar. The firm's contribution to design has shaped the way corporate identity programs influence culture. The book features over 100 case studies from the firm's previous and current clients, including Chase Bank, NBC, PanAm, PBS, and many more. Also included are interviews with Tom Geismar and Sagi Haviv, plus written contributions from Milton Glaser, John Maeda, and others.

Identity: Chermayeff and Geismar and Haviv

"a zDas Einfache ist nicht immer das Beste. Aber das Beste ist immer einfach.a oe (Heinrich Tessenow, Architekt) a zPerfektion ist nicht dann erreicht, wenn man nichts mehr hinzufA1/4gen, sondern wenn man nichts mehr weglassen kann.a oe (Antoine de Saint-ExupA(c)ry)" Weniger ist mehr, sagt man oft. Doch allzu hAufig gilt auch: Einfach ist verdammt schwer. Dieses erhellende kleine Buch prAsentiert die zehn Gesetze der Einfachheit fA1/4r Wirtschaft, Technologie, Design und Alltag. "Simplicity" ist der Rettungsanker in einem Meer immer komplexerer Prozesse und zunehmend unA1/4berschaubarer FunktionalitAten. Es ist nicht verwunderlich, dass viele Menschen heutzutage gegen eine Technologie rebellieren, die ihnen zu kompliziert geworden ist, ob es sich um DVD-Recorder mit verwirrend vielfAltigen Funktionen handelt oder um Software mit 75-MB-"Read me"-Anleitungen. Doch es gibt GegenentwA1/4rfe: So hat das klare, extrem reduzierte Design des iPod den Welterfolg dieses kleinen GerAts begrA1/4ndet. Manchmal geraten wir allerdings in das "Simplicity"-Paradox: Wir mAchten etwas, das einfach zu verstehen und leicht zu benutzen ist, aber dennoch soll es alle denkbaren hochkomplexen Aufgaben erfA1/4llen. In diesem erfrischend kurzen und pointierten Buch stellt uns John Maeda zehn Gesetze vor, mit denen sich Einfachheit und KomplexitAt in Einklang bringen lassen a" Leitlinien, wie wir aus Weniger Mehr machen kAnnen. Der Professor am renommierten Media Lab des Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) und weltweit gefragte Grafikdesigner erkundet die Frage, wie wir das Konzept der "Verbesserung" so umdefinieren kAnnen, dass es nicht zwangslAufig Mehr bedeutet. Maedas erstes Gesetz heiAt"Reduzieren," denn es ist nicht notwendigerweise hilfreich, neue technologische Features hinzuzufA1/4gen, bloss weil wir es kAnnten. Aber diejenigen Eigenschaften, die wir brauchen, sollten in einer vernA1/4nftigen Hierarchie organisiert sein (Gesetz 2), so dass die Nutzer nicht von Funktionen abgelenkt werden, die sie gar nicht brauchen. Maedas kompakter FA1/4hrer zur a zSimplicitya oe im digitalen Zeitalter verdeutlicht, wie dieses Konzept zum Eckpfeiler von Organisationen und ihren Produkten werden kann a" und warum es sich als treibende Kraft fA1/4r Wirtschaft und Technologie erweisen wird. Wir kAnnen vieles vereinfachen, ohne Bedeutung und Nutzen einzubA1/4Aen. Und die Balance zwischen diesen Polen erreichen wir mit dem 10. Gesetz: "Einfachheit heiAt, das Offensichtliche zu entfernen und das Bedeutsame hinzuzufA1/4gen."

John Maeda

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