Computational Graphic Design

Computational graphic design is an approach to designing complex graphics that involves considering the graphic as the result of a computation. Instead of creating and tweaking the graphic directly during the design process, the designer creates and tweaks the program that generates the graphic.

This approach has a number of strengths:

Automated creation of fine detail

By designing the scheme by which elements are placed, and then letting a computer perform the labour of actually placing all the elements, the designer can create more intricately detailed graphics than would be possible otherwise in the same time.

Live image

Normally, as you manually create the fine detail in an image, you get locked in to the path you’re following, and lose the ability to go back and make major design changes easily. If the detail is described procedurally, this does not usually happen. Major changes can be made at any time, and the procedural details will adjust to the new environment.

Unique details

Careful use of random numbers or nonlinear generative processes can produce details that need never repeat themselves. This could allow one to create numerous unique versions of a small work, or maybe a larger work that plays with translated symmetry, but never actually repeats itself identically.

Data sources

Data can easily be imported from external sources, and used to control any aspect of the graphic. This might mean using a photograph to control the palette or layout of an image, or using hard data to create a data visualization or infographic.

New horizons

The computational approach to graphic design is a relatively new technique, which operates in some fundamentally different ways than previous approaches. This makes accessible some broad new swathes of design space, which really want to be explored.