Python for Visual Designers

Learn the basics of Python in the free MacOS application DrawBot. Create and animate vector art, set type with code, and save your sketches as vector and raster images, videos, and .pdfs.

As designers, we use tools to help complete our work but often don’t consider how these tools can box us into certain processes and solutions. Creating our own tools can lead us down new and unexpected avenues in our designs. Some of the best visual ideas come about by setting up some boundaries — a color palette, a typeface or two — and then running wild within the system. Working out a system in code is a great way to explore these ideas: computers love repetition and can quickly make hundreds of variations on a theme, and mistakes in the code can result in something that often looks better than what was originally intended.

No programming experience is necessary for this course (held over two weekends: Saturday to Sunday, September 21–22 and September 28–29, from 10am–1pm), but students should be comfortable doing some arithmetic and basic geometry. Workshop participants will learn the basics of the Python programming language while working in the free DrawBot application for MacOS. A quick sketch made with code in DrawBot can be saved as a .pdf to be finished later in Illustrator. Or, with a little bit more work in the code editor, an entire book, magazine, or animation can be built without even launching Illustrator or InDesign.

Using the fundamentals of the Python programming language, students will sketch to create vector art with code and use the basic principles of design to turn their sketches into PDF documents, animated .gifs, and videos.