Benjamin Fry (born 1975) is an American

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

who has expertise in

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

Early life and education

Fry was born in 1975 in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

."Inside design now: National Design Triennial", by Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt Museum
"Benjamin Fry"
/ref> Fry received his BFA in Communication Design, minor in Computer Science at the Carnegie Mellon University. He received Master and Ph.D. degrees from the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

, under the direction of

John Maeda John Maeda (born 1966) is a Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. He is an American technologist and designer whose work explores where business, design, and technology merge to make space for the "humanist techno ...

. His doctoral dissertation, "Computational Information Design" introduces the seven stages of visualizing data: acquiring, parsing, filtering, mining, representing, refining and interacting.

Career

During his time at MIT Media Lab, Fry co-developed Processing, an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

and

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of

computer programming Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...

in a visual context.Ben Fry
author's profile at the

O'Reilly O'Reilly () is a common Irish surname. The O'Reillys were historically the kings of East Bréifne in what is today County Cavan. The clan were part of the Connachta's Uí Briúin Bréifne kindred and were closely related to the Ó Ruairc ( ...

website The Processing design environment developed together with

Casey Reas Casey Edwin Barker Reas (born 1972), also known as C. E. B. Reas or Casey Reas, is an American artist whose conceptual, procedural and minimal artworks explore ideas through the contemporary lens of software. Reas is perhaps best known for having ...

won a Golden Nica from the

Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria ...

in 2005. During 2006–2007, Fry was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. He is a principal of Fathom, a design and software consultancy in

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. Fry's artwork has been featured in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial (2003, 2006) and the Whitney Biennial (2002), and at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in New York (2001, 2008),

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...

in Linz, Austria (2000, 2002, 2005) and in the films '' Minority Report'' and ''

The Hulk The Hulk is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in the debut issue of '' The Incredible Hulk'' (May 1962). In his comic book ...

''. He is the winner of the 2011

National Design Award The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are various awards funded and bestowed by the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards when applicable. Any supplement ...

in category "Interaction Design"."National Design Awards: Ben Fry’s ‘Odd Route’ Through Design World Pays Off"
, by Stephanie Murg, June 15, 2011

Books

*2007: (with

) ''Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists'',

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

*2007: ''Visualizing Data'',

*2010: (with Casey Reas) ''Getting Started with Processing'',

*2015: (with Casey Reas and Lauren McCarthy) ''Getting Started with p5.js,''

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fry, Ben 1975 births Living people Artists from Massachusetts Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni American computer scientists American designers American digital artists Carnegie Mellon University faculty Information graphic designers MIT Media Lab people

Early life and education

Career

Books

See also

References

External links