Cooper Hewitt says...
Ben Fry is a multi-disciplinary information designer focused on using software and programming as a means to understand complex information. Fry is a principal at Fathom, a design and software consultancy in Boston, as well as co-founder of the open source programming design tool, Processing. He received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computational Group at the MIT Media Lab where his research combined computer science, statistics, graphic design, and data visualization. Fry has served as a postdoc at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and as the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
Fry and Casey Reas started working on Processing in 2001, as a new type of creative tool for designers to develop visual, interactive media. Processing continues to be used by students and professionals as an alternative to proprietary software tools. A robust open source community supports its ongoing development. In 2007, Fry and Reas published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists with MIT Press, and in 2010, Getting Started with Processing with O'Reilly and MAKE.
In 2011, Fry was awarded the National Design Award for Interaction Design from Cooper Hewitt. His work, including Processing, has been featured in Cooper Hewitt exhibitions including Inside Design Now: National Design Triennial (2003), Design Life Now: National Design Triennial (2006), and Graphic Design: Now in Production (2011).
