Using design software has been an indispensable part of the creative process since the arrival of the personal computer. Big-time companies, such as Adobe and Microsoft, and more recently, generative artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI, dominate this industry. Commercial software services serve the demand for tools in the creative sector, and working without these services feels almost unthinkable. This phenomenon highlights the importance of learning how to build one's own design tools through code, emphasizing its relevance in a technology-driven industry.

Transform, Learn, Liberate is a systematic guide for building web-based creative design tools (called generative design systems) with creative coding. Transform computational design into new functional tools, learn important aspects, functions and methods of programming as a design practice, and liberate yourself from existing preformatted software dictated by others.

You can start by getting to know p5.js ↗, an open-source creative coding language based on Javascript, used to build the semantic structures behind generative design systems. Feel more like exploring the posibilities first? Try out one of the tools ↗ developed for this guide.