Jürg Lehni has created a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that lets you use Javascript to create new ways of generating artwork. Here’s how he describes it:

Scriptographer is a scripting plugin for Adobe Illustrator▞¢. It gives the user the possibility to extend Illustrator’s functionality by the use of the JavaScript language.

The user is no longer limited to the same tools that are used by most graphic designers around the globe. Scriptographer allows the creation of mouse controlled drawing-tools, effects that modify existing graphics and scripts that create new ones.

The gallery on the website reminds me of work from John Maeda and the MIT Media Lab, whose work showed the possibilities of programming applied to visual expression.

The nice thing about Scriptographer is the incorporation of programming functionality in a familiar environment. The growing number of premade scripts makes this plug-in a little more accessible as well. The plug-in’s still in beta and doesn’t work on Intel Macs yet, but it will be exciting to see what grows out of it once the final version comes out.

Visit the Scriptographer home