Don’t Just Use Tools, Make Them.
Tags: Creative Coding, Processing, Design, Creativity, Management And Leadership

Casey's works were completely different from graphic designs I’ve ever seen in my life, and I was astounded by the power of computation, which a human hand would never be able to replicate.

Not Using a Tool but Making One

Upon understanding Casey’s work, I realized that the complex graphic representation is achieved by defining a set of simple rules and then programming the rules to be executed.

I also came to realize the difference between what Casey was doing and what I was doing. Creating a 3D computer graphic involves using software that someone wrote. But Casey is writing his own software to create his work.

If you start to make your own tools, the possibility of creation becomes infinitely deep and wide. From that moment, my desire to study 3D computer graphics transformed into something completely different, which enabled me to jump into this new paradigm.

This is a visualization I made with Processing in the Visual Music class taught by Casey.

Throughout my 4 years as an undergraduate student, I immersed myself in the domain of interaction design and interface design. The more I advanced in my years, and I realized the importance of the tool upon designing something and the fact that designing the tool itself defines the output.

There was a particular event that rendered memorable for me during my time at UCLA Design Media Arts. Once, I had the opportunity to attend Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, one of the leading international events in media arts.

As a special guest, John Maeda was also at the event. He still is, and even back then, he was a superstar beyond my reach, and simply being at the same event with him and being able to talk to him (Ars Electronica was not a big event) was a dream-come-true moment for me.

He had a special lecture at Ars Electronica and (of course) I attended. During the lecture, he talked about the importance of designers and artists writing software. Since it was not as common as today for designers and artists to code, his particular story struck my mind.

He said that using software someone else wrote and designing on that software is almost like living in someone else’s dream. Creating tools should also be included in the designer’s realm. Needless to say, I was deeply intrigued by what he said, and his phrase was engraved in my mind.

Realizing the Potential of Creating Tools

Since then, years have passed. I graduated from UCLA and returned to Japan, started my career in the world of advertising.

While I admit there is some certain similarity; however, a creative career in advertising was different from what I have experienced in college.

Skills in making creative advertising are something unique, I would say.

Many would admit that there is a certain “best practice” to come up with ideas. Still, given that there are many jobs and talents involved in the advertising industry, such as planners, copywriters, art directors, creative technologists, etc., there is no unified approach to achieving the best results. The approaches to them are countless.

Therefore, those who aspire to become the “next big thing” in the industry study deeply about the past approaches to create a new one to succeed in the future advertising industry.

As I spent years in the creative advertising industry, like in college, I thought there is a method to leverage the power of creativity systematically.

However, I did not have any answer nor a hint of approaching this problem.

Making My Question as a Research Theme

The time went on, and I added 10 more years to my career. Then came the opportunity for me to return to the world of academia once again.

Although the main focus of returning to graduate school was to enhance my abilities as a professional, I also wanted to have an academic theme that will dictate the 2 years in graduate school.

Professionally, I was involved in many challenging projects that attempted to utilize artificial intelligence in the realm of creativity. The more I participated in projects like these, and I remembered when I first came across creative coding when I was 18. Facing the groundbreaking shift in AI, I imagined if this could be a tool to assist creativity. Given the freedom to study anything I want aside from work, I decided to study AI and leverage it to enhance the user’s creativity. To meet my objectives, I enrolled in the necessary classes and developed my thesis project.

My master’s thesis was about AI and creativity.

What I Noticed After Leaving Academia

After a wonderful and fruitful 2 years at graduate school, I returned to Tokyo and started to work.

Before going to graduate school, my main focus in work was as a single player. It was all about what I wanted to achieve, but since I returned to Japan, I started to think more holistically, including everyone in the team.

It’s no longer about me achieving something, but rather how we can achieve as a group of people.

Come to think about it, the notion of building a tool and attempting to enhance one’s creative ability is not just only for myself but includes others too using the tool. Therefore, I recently started to think that this also connects with management.

Work, in general, is about making a tool and creating a system that creates value. That is also about management.

For some reason, I got interested in using computer graphics. I then got intrigued by using tools for expression and then came across computation, interface, and interactive design domains in a broad sense.

Since I started to work, I got interested in the realm of creativity, furthermore broader than design, and then got interested in creating the tool itself.

Today, my interest has shifted from there to the realm of management. Looking at a perspective, I think my overall interest hasn’t changed that much, but rather surprised how deep I can dig my interest.

I’m overwhelmed with everyday life and work, but I want to continue to follow my passion for this topic and see how far I can go.