Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[CS6]
[Julia Laub] I actually believe that nature inspires every generative artist.
Many systems of nature like growing structures, evolutionary processes,
flocking behavior--these are exactly the kinds of processes
that form the foundation for many algorithms in generative design.
I'm Julia Laub, and I'm an information designer.
Onformative is a generative design agency.
My partner is Cedric Kiefer.
I'm Cedric Kiefer.
I'm part of Onformative.
I don't want to sound too nerdy, but there is something about math
and formulas and algorithms that are fascinating.
[♪ Music ♪]
What we do is new to a lot of people.
The difference between generative design and traditional design
is actually how you approach the project and start at the very beginning.
Instead of defining how something might look
you try to define some rules how it might behave.
You're working a whole world of possibilities.
You're working on a whole system that you can shape and form and influence,
so it's about creating choices and making choices.
[Julia Laub] I believe that we are completely overwhelmed by data in our lives.
The mission of the designer is
to make the important data visible while filtering out the rest.
[Cedric Kiefer] Talking about data doesn't mean that you have to supply an
access sheet or a list of numbers.
It's always about telling a story, and data could be actually everything
from raw numbers to the movement of the mouse
to the movement of your whole body, sound, or even emotion.
Everything could be data, so everything could be visualized
and turned into art.
The Growing Data Project started as a personal project
exploring the possibilities of imitating nature
and combining principles from nature
and load data into them and make them behave differently
depending on the data set.
The Skype poster is a real personal project to me and Julia
because it's not using some data that was brought to us by a client
but data that was collected by ourselves throughout the years,
actually since we first met.
It started with our first discussion on Skype 3 years ago,
and there is everything in it from the moment when we decided to found the agency
up to the creation of the poster itself.
[♪ Music ♪]
[Julia Laub] We experiment a lot.
We have an area in our agency that we call the lab.
[Cedric Kiefer] It always helps us to get to know new techniques,
and even if it's not needed for a commercial project yet
you just get to know the technique, and when it comes up
and it's needed than you've got it, got it ready and can use it right away.
[Speaking German]
It's not like you are starting from zero over every time you start a new project.
You're definitely building up on projects you have done before.
There's no day where we don't use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
It's just an important part of the design process.
Besides that, we're definitely standing on the shoulders of giants
by using code that is published by the open source community,
and all the tools we are using are free to use,
and we're using a lot of libraries that are supplied by people who develop them.
And on the other hand, we are trying to give something back
to the community as well by publishing our code
and doing workshops and teaching a lot.
It's the combination of writing your own tools and using
the already existing tools, and that's what we do in our job.
[Julia Laub] Generative design allows us to do things that other designers can't do.
What interests me is that it's such a young discipline.
One of the things I really hope for
is that our agency continues as it is now,
that we will continue to experiment and keep having fun with our work,
and, most importantly, that we make time to pass our acquired knowledge
on to the next generation.
[Adobe]
