Maeda@Media by John Maeda, Nicholas Negroponte (Foreword by)

From the Publisher

John Maeda is a pioneer in the world of graphic art and is quickly crossing over from graphic design to pop culture icon. Maeda has developed an entirely new computer language that sits artfully between abstraction, craftsmanship, and pure communication. In addition to his pioneering language, Maeda has amassed a fascinating, interactive, and stunningly beautiful collection of work. 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. He has created innovative, interactive calendars, greeting cards, and advertisements for companies such as Sony, Shisheido, and Absolut Vodka.

A glorious visual exploration of ideas and graphic form, Meada @ Media is a compendium of experience and experimentation that has taken a decade to gather. Twelve thematic chapters provide an overview of his entire career and research. Also included is new, riveting imagery that has been created exclusively for this publication.

Coming together in a massive 464 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.

Author Biography: John Maeda is Sony Professor of Media Arts and Science at the M.I.T. Media Lab. He is the author of Design by Numbers.

Nicholas Negroponte is the director of the M.I.T. Lab and the author of Being Digital.

Product Details

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

One question was how to change the world. A well designed building here and there was an unlikely means, except in history books. But designing the tools designers would use felt like a lot more leverage. And, MIT being the birthplace of computer graphics, I was brought quickly to the idea of computer-aided design, under the influence of a self-made mathematician named Steve Coons.

Steve had figured out how to mathematically "loft" ships and airplanes (the long gentle curves which literally required lofts to be laid out and drawn at full scale) on a standard size sheet of paper. Believe me, in the 1960s, bringing computers and design together required pure faith, because the two seemed to bring out the worst in each other. Furthermore, the intellectual space itself seemed to be fully occupied by either failed artists or failed scientists. For the next thirty years, the signature of the machine was invariably stronger than the humans. Witness the near irrelevance to date of computer art -- all those unseemly pinstriped suits.

This is changing for many reasons, three of which are germane to this book: visual thinking, graphical expression, and simplicity.

Visual thinking is more a part of our lives than ever before. The personal computer, the Internet, and modern-day printers bring us into regular contact with drawings, diagrams, and photographs. Increasingly, we make or process them ourselves. Children manipulate lines, shapes, color, as well as still and moving images, like no generation before. We're not only digital, we're visual.

Graphic design is emerging as an every-day tool for communications. After a period of graphical cacophony, which resulted from limitless options (fonts and layout galore), we have entered into a period of far more subtle design, constrained by the continuing need to inform. Making things quick and easy to understand is a requirement, now more than ever.

Besides, we're all fed up with complexity. Software has turned into a compost heap of useless options, expired releases and nonsensical interfaces. In fact, computers have become harder to use in recent years, not easier. They're also less reliable.

We've all had enough of this. It is time to rethink our digital world and to listen to new voices. John Maeda is one of them. He 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, and in so doing-in my mind-is the grey pinstriped suit we have all been looking for.

--Nicholas Negroponte