December is gift-giving time, and if you're not very organized indeed, late November/early December threatens to be characterized not by a pleasant anticipation of quality-time-to-come and a much-needed respite from work and research, but instead by a certain existential dread, or at least a rather more ontic version, most often directed at visions of the mall parking lot.

Being the vigilant designers we are, Design less better organized in November under the auspices of creating some generative art for the holidays. We especially liked Jer Thorp’s idea of using letterforms as elements in a snowflake, but we wanted to personalize the results. In what even now we have to admit was a brilliant intuitive leap, we thought, "why not use the names of our loved ones? Then we can give them to our loved ones instead of going to the mall."

Once we knew we were making these as gifts, we decided we would digitally fabricate ornaments from our designs. This threw a structural requirement on top of the aesthetic one, but, remembering the mall, we plunged bravely forward.

A detail from a generated snowflake.

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December is gift-giving time, and if you're not very organized indeed, late November/early December threatens to be characterized not by a pleasant anticipation of quality-time-to-come and a much-needed respite from work and research, but instead by a certain existential dread, or at least a rather more ontic version, most often directed at visions of the mall parking lot.

Being the vigilant (and vigilante) designers we are, Design less better organized in November under the auspices of creating some generative art for the holidays. We especially liked Jer Thorp’s idea of using letterforms as elements in a snowflake, but we wanted to personalize the results. In what even now we have to admit was a brilliant intuitive leap, we thought, "why not use the names of our loved ones? Then we can give them to our loved ones instead of going to the mall."

Once we knew we were making these as gifts, we decided we would digitally fabricate ornaments from our designs. This threw a structural requirement on top of the aesthetic one, but, remembering the mall, we plunged bravely forward.

A detail from a generated snowflake.

Read More...