Getting started with Creative Coding

Since i share my work on Instagram and connect with people throught this channel, i quite often get asked about advices for getting started with creative coding. Mostly the people who ask have a background in graphic design, just like my students. Here are some tips and advices for beginners. I hope they will help you to get on the right path!

Understand why it is worth it

The biggest challenge in the beginning is the right mindset. You will probably experience that learning to code is mostly not as convenient as learning a graphical user-interface. At the same time it comes with millions of more possiblities that no proprietary software can ever have.

The skilll of programming had a huge impact on my life in many regards. These days coders with design-skills and designers with coding-skills are very demanded. In business, they can build bridges between two departments that had been separated for decades.

Realize that coding can transform your situation. It is definitely worth the time, if you enjoy it!

Choose the right language

This is very confusing in the beginning! There are thousands of possible directions to go and most people just suffer from choosing one. My opinion: It does not really matter which technology you learn at first, because the principles are the same across all technologies. Nonetheless i personally would recommend to start with Processing, because of a few good reasons:

• It is very accessible and easy to learn. You can jump right in
• it is made for designers just like you
• the community is huge and friendly
• there are very good courses and tutorials out there
• it is the perfect foundation to learn any other programming-language
• you can export any file-format (images, vector-graphics, animations etc.)

Give it a try. I think you’ll like it!

Create a blog and share your achievements

Whether you write about your progress or you share ideas through images and animations: I would recommend to put your work out there as early as possible. People shall see what you are doing! This has many very interesting side-effects:

• You will develop a practice of rapid prototyping, which is a great skill
• You will learn to get comfortable with showing your work to a wide audience
• You will learn to know people that like what you do
• You will have a portfolio that you can show to others
• Good feedback boosts motivation

Convinced? So which platform is the right one? I like Instagram, because all my friends are there. But i’ve started with tumblr, which was nice for perfect gif-loops. It does not matter that much. Choose one. And get started.

Embrace technology in general

These times are crazy: There are so many young technologies that have the potencial to change the whole game. The longest time of my life i’ve rejected this, it simply scared me. Today i believe that creatives must explore, challenge and evaluate any innovation. It helps to understand it in general and find solutions to use it in a good way.

Code is poetry

Yes it is confusing and hard to understand in the beginning, but believe me, the day comes when you begin to experience and understand the beauty of code.

Find sparring partners

An effective method to keep your motivation is to find people who start nearly at the same level. To compete with somebody can have a strong influence for your learning process. I’ve experienced this with my friend Patrik Hübner and since 2014 we are companions with a deep passion for the same thing. We meet once a week to swap ideas and talk about our newest explorations. We have a very inspirational and strong friendship.

Find good tutorials

For beginners, i would recommend to watch the introductional courses by Daniel Shiffman. Side note: I will publish an own course for graphic designers soon. Stay tuned!

Attend to meetups

Since 2015 i meet with a dynamic group of creative coders from all over Europe to spend a week in a house in the Netherlands. There we all work on personal, self-initiated projects. For me, that’s a highlight every year and i enjoy it very much. Furthermore i mostly finish something that i would not have the time for in my daily life. If you are interested, check this facebook-group

Connect with creative coders worldwide

Facebook-groups are a great way to connect with the huge community all around creative coding. I would recommend to take a look at this groups: Creative Coding with Processing and p5.js

Conclusion

These are my tips for you to get started. Did i miss anything? Please let me know what you think.

Happy coding!