This is both a book and an interactive tutorial in computer programming for artists and designers. While it is now common for printed books to include CD-ROMs, this one has instead its own website where free software, called DBN (Design By Numbers), can be accessed, downloaded, and used by anyone with a JAVA-enabled browser. Using the book and website in combination, it is the intention of the author (who heads the Aesthetics and Computation group at MIT) that designers, even those who are "mathematically challenged," might quickly acquire "the skills necessary to write computer programs that are themselves visual expressions," and, as a consequence, "come to appreciate the computer's unique role in the future of the arts and design." Unfortunately, the layout of the book is so unexceptional (particularly the dust jacket, which might have been used in a powerful way) that it is unlikely to convert any graphic designers, who create far more complex forms intuitively, with little or no knowledge of programming. As a result, it may only reach those who need it least, meaning those who are already straddling the line between art and mathematics, between graphic design and computer programming. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.)
