13 Designs that Inspired MIT Professor Zach Lieberman I Source Material

By Figma

Categories: Design, Product

Summary

MIT Professor Zach Lieberman reveals how foundational design books—particularly John Maeda's 'Design by Numbers'—shaped his approach to computational creativity. The key insight: everything starts as a napkin sketch, and the most important design education comes from studying original source material and understanding how artists think, not finished products.

Key Takeaways

  1. Physical books and printed materials preserve design work at high resolution in ways digital formats cannot. Print allows you to see original color, texture, and detail that gets compressed or lost on screens—critical for understanding an artist's actual intent.
  2. Find mentors through books before meeting them in person. Lieberman discovered John Maeda's work through 'Design by Numbers' as a student, which opened a new world of computational creativity before becoming his colleague at MIT Media Lab.
  3. Study process documentation, not just finished work. Masahiko Sato's Visual Diaries showing napkin sketches and rough ideas are more instructive than polished final designs because they reveal how thinking actually happens.
  4. Teaching artists and designers to engage with creative history is foundational. Building tools for the future requires understanding past artistic movements, experimental interfaces, and how artists approached problems with technology.
  5. Constraint breeds creativity and accessibility. Two-frame animation on printed pages feels 'liberating'—showing that minimal constraints (two frames, physical media) can produce more impactful work than complex digital tools.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

Hi I'm Zack and this is my Source Material. John Maeda was a professor at MIT Media Lab. I'm now a professor at MIT Media Lab, so he's really a hero to me. And this is a collection of his work at MIT. He was writing about computation and writing about making art with computers. His process making experimental interfaces, making books, doing just all kinds of things. And he would have these crazy layouts, like this is a computer program. The type of the computer program is on the whole page. Here he's doing an infinity sign in code. I remember when I was a student finding these books, he was describing in images and in text and in language, this thing that I knew I knew there was some power there. I knew there was something to explore. And he was showing a way. And you know, sometimes I fee…

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