Processing opened up the world of programming to artists, designers, educators, and beginners. The p5.js JavaScript implementation of Processing reinterprets it for today's web. This short book gently introduces the core concepts of computer programming and working with Processing. Written by the co-founders of the Processing project, Casey Reas and Ben Fry, along with Lauren McCarthy, one of the minds behind p5.js, Getting Started with p5.js gets you in on the fun!

You'll learn to draw, color and shape. Add variants, motion, maps, and much more to your digital designs.

Meet the Authors

Lauren McCarthy is an artist and programmer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is full-time faculty at NYU ITP, and recently a resident at CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Eyebeam. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT. Her work explores the structures and systems of social interactions, identity, and self-representation, and the potential for technology to mediate, manipulate, and evolve these interactions. She is fascinated by the slightly uncomfortable moments when patterns are shifted, expectations are broken, and participants become aware of the system.

At Sosolimited and Small Design Firm, Lauren has worked on installations for the London Eye, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, IBM, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello. She has also worked at Oblong Industries, Continuum and the MIT Media Lab.

Her artwork has been shown in a variety of contexts, including the Ars Electronica Center, Conflux Festival, SIGGRAPH, LACMA, the Japan Media Arts Festival, Share Festival, File Festival, the WIRED Store, and probably to you without you knowing it at some point while interacting with her.

Casey Reas is a professor in the Department of Design Media Arts at UCLA and a graduate of the MIT Media Laboratory. Reas' software has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. With Ben Fry, he co-founded Processing in 2001. He is the co-author of Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (2007) and Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (2010). His work is archived at www.reas.com.

Ben Fry has a doctorate from the MIT Media Laboratory and was the 2006-2007 Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. He worked with Casey Reas to develop Processing, which won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005. Ben's work has received a New Media Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, and been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Ars Electronica, the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and the 2003 Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.