What is the relevance of programming to creatives?

Mitchell Pearce, a Graphic Designer and Design & Art Direction Student at the Manchester School of Art in England wrote me a week or so ago with some questions on the relevance of coding to people entering a creative profession.

Mitchell asks…..

“Is understanding code simply an extra area of expertise to add to your CV or is it soon to be a necessity within the future of creative fields?”

“How valuable you think procedural literacy is to somebody in a creative role? And do you believe that more emphasis should be put on learning programming during higher education?”

Hi Mitchell,

Good questions indeed! Absolutely procedural literacy will add value. Exactly how much value depends on what creative fields you plan to go into. Is it a necessity?

I do not think programing skill is a necessity for the average creative. If you intend to be an exceptional designer, art director or creative director I think that you need have a thorough understanding of the technology that impacts your area of focus. In some creative fields intermediate programming skill is a big advantage, web design and mobile application design are a good examples. The more you understand how your vision will ultimately be realized the better off you will be.

In my professional experience as a creative working with in-house and 3rd party development shops it is very useful to have coding skills even if you never actually use them on the project you are working on. Especially if you are in a small design shop, technology contractors may try to take advantage of the situation if they smell technical weakness on the part of the creative/design team. Simply having the technical skills to suggest the optimal development path when a 3rd party contractor is trying to steer you down a more expensive route is worth the investment.

Sadly, technology failures are a two way street. I have also experienced just as many instances where designers and even creative directors did not have a good understanding of the technology for their space. Consequently the designers would have to rework their design several times to get it right. Having worked on the development side, it is very frustrating to work with designers who do not understand the technology.

Unfortunately I think it is asking a lot of most creatives to require them to be both a creative and technical genius at the same time. Likewise it is ambitious to ask development gurus to learn creativity. Not everyone can switch back and forth between left and right brain tasks easily. Some creative geniuses are simply not hard wired in their brains to be great developers too.

No matter what creative career you go into there is always the option of partnering up with brilliant technicians to help you realize your vision if you can’t execute the technical aspects of your ideas yourself.

If one is venturing into the nebulous field of new media art I think having some technical skills will be a necessity in order to stay at the top of the curve. The new media art category is a niche that is uniquely well suited to technically proficient artists.

Quite simply an artist who can quickly code ideas that one can’t do with off the shelf software has an advantage over others without the means to do so themselves. Any kind of interactive or conceptual art that mixes new technology or interactivity with audio and visuals will pretty much mandate you have some coding skill (or a good friend with coding skills) so you can push the boundaries as the artist yourself. The leaders in this area won’t wait for Adobe to push the envelope, they will do it first and then Adobe will make a plug in for it.

One of the artists who I would consider to be a pioneer in new media art and design is Mehmet Akten (aka memo) www.memo.tv, recently he created a large scale interactive projection for the release of Google Chrome. Memo is a good example of a creative and technical genius.

IMG_0571.jpg

See more photos of Memo’s work here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/memotv/sets/72157625661307816/

If you are going into fields like print advertising, coding literacy may not be as important. But in the future, a good understanding of technology will still be essential .

Moore’s law is taking us to a new world of possibilities with smaller and smaller microprocessors capable of doing things previously unimaginable on new types of packaging materials. Not only is the network becoming ubiquitous but we are just starting to see the dawn of a ubiquitous network of things.

The constant innovation in technology, connectivity and processing power will drive change in traditional creative industries and create new niches for the technology enlightened creative.

Even print and package design, a segment of the creative industry that has evolved at a relative snails pace for decades, is headed for a sea change at some point in the future. A box of cereal may no longer be just a box of cereal, it may be smart and may communicate to its consumers when it is running out of its contents. In the future, products may even be able to add themselves to your shopping list autonomously.

I visited the Fulton Innovation booth at CES this year and below is a video of what I saw there. The video shows a working conceptual prototype and is a good indication of where the packaging industry could go in the future. This is one possible vision of the future using a small subset of current innovations in technology. The the creative and marketing implications of this technology to other sectors are vast.

If you want to live out on the edge of these new interactive communication technologies you will need some technical skills or at a minimum a solid understanding of how interactive technology works to properly design the package, point of sale, or interactive ad etc.. Once again the leaders in this space will not wait for Adobe to make a plug in or wysiwyg tool to build the first versions of these new marketing innovations.

So to answer the question about higher education yes, universities should place more focus on technology in their creative programs and offer creative coding courses.

I do think universities are beginning to see the trends in the marketplace and respond.

I am an adjunct lecturer at my alma mater Southern Methodist University in Texas. SMU has recently created a new Center for Creative Computation which is run by author and professor Ira Greenberg. It is a collaboration between the Art department and the Engineering departments at SMU. SMU also created their trade guild which offers majors in game design and development among other things. These very positive developments are breaking down the walls between art and technology. I would be surprised if many other universities are not considering the same path.

In summary, it is not absolutely necessary to have coding skills in order to be a successful creative director or artist. It is essential to have a solid understanding of the technology that impacts your sector of expertise. It is a huge advantage in some creative areas to have good programming skills. So if you have the capacity to learn programming, it is well worth the effort. If not, you can always partner up with a good technologist/developer to help you realize your vision.

About Don Relyea

Artist/Programmer/Inventor living in Texas
This entry was posted in art, CES 2011, design, New Media Art, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to What is the relevance of programming to creatives?

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention What is the relevance of programming to creatives? | Don Relyea's Blog -- Topsy.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>