Why generative art
After 17 years in brand design, I started writing code to make art. Here's why algorithmic randomness became the most honest creative practice I've found.
The contradiction
I spent most of my career controlling every pixel. Brand systems are precision instruments. Every color, every curve, every kerning pair exists for a reason. The work is beautiful because nothing is accidental.
Generative art is the opposite. You write rules, then let the machine surprise you. The beauty comes from what you didn't plan.
What drew me in
It started with a DrawBot script in 2018. I was generating variations of a grid pattern for a brand project and noticed that some of the "mistakes" (the random offsets, the color noise) were more interesting than the designed version.
That was the moment. The algorithm was making choices I wouldn't have made. And some of them were better than mine.
The process
My workflow now looks like this:
- Start with a constraint. A grid, a curve, a color rule.
- Add controlled randomness. Perlin noise, probability distributions, random walks.
- Run it hundreds of times. Most outputs are garbage.
- Curate ruthlessly. The art is in the selection, not the generation.
- Print at scale. These pieces need physical presence.
The code is the instrument. The artist is still the one making decisions. Just different decisions than before.
The connection to brand work
Generative art made me a better brand designer. When you spend time with randomness, you develop an instinct for when something is alive versus when it's just correct. The best brand systems have that quality. They feel like they could keep generating new expressions of the same idea.
That's what I'm after in both practices: systems that feel inevitable but never predictable.