But the traditional book has proved to be remarkably resilient by: a) doing its job rather well as a portable, user-friendly means of allowing us to read thousands of words and b) being versatile enough to be constantly reinvented. Visual Editions Doleful predictions of the death of the book have been uttered every time a new medium has emerged, from radio onward. You can do all of this by touching, stroking or tilting an iPad screen while flicking through “Alice for the iPad,” an application created by Atomic Antelope, an Anglo-American design duo (one designer is based in London, the other in Seattle) that specializes in developing new reading concepts for the iPad.

The stars of the story, though, are the data visualizations that help us make sense of modern life by presenting complex, constantly changing information clearly.Īlice for the iPad Ever fancied throwing jam tarts at the Queen of Hearts when reading “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? Or shaking the Mad Hatter’s head? Chucking pepper at the Duchess? Swinging a 19th-century pocket watch on its chain? Watching Alice get bigger, only to shrink again? Seeing her neck grow longer? One outcome is the simulation programs that enable architects to create increasingly intricate buildings by anticipating how they will “perform” over the years. “Form + Code” shows how those breakthroughs led to the current explosion of computational aesthetics in design, art and architecture. The book, by the American designer-programmers Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams and the Dutch design group LUST, is not only clearly written, it explains computing phenomena to the techno-challenged by making comparisons with everyday life. Take the time that Charles Eames took his friend and fellow designer Eero Saarinen to a drive-in movie theater to see Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the 1940 film “Strike Up the Band.” As Saarinen said to him afterward: “Those two youngsters might just go somewhere.”įorm + Code Most books on computer programming tend to be written by and for programmers and are unapologetically incomprehensible to the rest of us.

Packed with information and insights on the development of every piece of furniture produced by the Eames Office, it is filled with product shots, technical drawings, advertisements, magazine and newspaper clippings, snapshots, profiles of the Eames’s collaborators and employees, and anecdotes.

Tree of codes by jonathan safran foer