Design with Generative Processes

Generative Design is the decomposition of the design process into a limited amount of steps, rules and parameters, and their combination into an algorithm, respectively the combination of several algorithms into a program. A program is able to run countless iterations and generate a large amount of individual images or other graphical products.

In the realm of applied visual design, generative strategies work well with projects that require a larger amount of individual and original products in many different formats and media, whilst maintaining a joint, recognisable look.

Pioneering Artists

The idea of a generative approach to design is not limited to code-based and computer-aided processes. Already in the 1960s (and partly earlier), designers, artists and musicians have been using generative processes, experimenting with alternative approaches to create visual and musical compositions.

The Swiss graphic artist and designer Karl Gerstner used programmatic means in the 1960s to develop typography, brand designs, fine arts objects and wall tableaus. For each project, he defined a number of interdepending rules for the use of colours, the relation of sizes, the distribution, positioning, or rotation of objects, etc., and systematically went through all possible compositions.

His book Designing Programmes (1964) is a standard reference until today, and provides a great introduction into the idea of generative design processes with many illustrated examples.

Other pioneering artists in the sixties already picked up computer programs for image design: Germans Frieder Nake, Georg Nees and Manfred Mohr, French-Hungarian Vera Molnar, and a number of others. Avantgarde composer John Cage used algorithmic instructions for the performers instead of a musical score, and integrated chance and aleatoric parts into his compositions.

„random walk” by Manfred Mohr, plotter drawings ink on paper, 50cm x 35cm

Authorship and Artistic Intention

Some artists have stated to use generative methods to avoid emotionality and hide the personal artistic intention – to create rational art, or art that is originally created by computers. Karl Gerstner had a more cooperative view on the relation of artist and algorithm. The planning of the functionality of an image, and its relationship with the viewer, is an indirect part of the design work, he wrote in “Designing Programmes”. John Cage being asked if he would use chance to withdraw from artistic decision-making, replied that his decisions appear in the form of what questions are being asked.

Reaching New Notions

In fact, generative design is even more about the surpassing of intentionality than about its prevention. Generative strategies applied in industrial design and architecture beautifully illustrate this idea: different from graphic design, their generative products have to persist not only subjective and aesthetic, but rational and measurable criteria, such as the functionality of a chair, or the statics of a generated construction.

These given criteria might be accomplished by a concept which not even the most progressive designer or engineer had ever invented. It sounds naive, but probably every creative worker knows about the intellectual challenge to refrain from the familiar and accustomed idea of what something should be like.
The breakup of a design concept into elements, their relationships and behaviour algorithms can help in overcoming the traditional cultural notion of form, and therefore provide a way to discover the new and to recognise it as aesthetic.

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