Pt.js - an experiment of visual forms in code

William Ngan was studying point, form, and space. His deep study turned in a fun and interesting experiment. It’s called Pt.js – a JavaScript library which you can use to make crazy, strange, awesome visual forms in code.

We got in touch with William and ask him a few questions, he was happy to tell us the story behind his unique experiment.

A few words: Pt started as a conceptual code experiment, and currently it also works as an experimental JavaScript library. In my mind, there is a practical goal and a conceptual goal:

Practically, I’m keen to reduce the frictions going from “imagining” into “coding” – for example, it’s intuitive to imagine lines and circles and their visual potentials, but when you sit down and code, often the mental images just dissipated. So I pay a lot of attentions to make the code semantic and minimalistic, and as non-technical as possible.

Conceptually, I want to separate the ideas from the forms — What sorts of potential forms can an idea create, and in which contexts? So Pt is an investigation into the union of Point, Form, and Space. In simple terms, you may think of Point as the idea, Form as the brush, and Space as the canvas (like in traditional painting). You can read more about this here: https://medium.com/@williamngan/pt-93382bf5943e

This has been a side project of mine for a long time (I’m lazy!). It was only released about 3 weeks ago, so lots of changes and improvements to be made. I’m also working on some new projects based on this.

If you want to get started, you can browse the demo page where lots of cool examples are available, read the quick start guide or documentation. Here are some awesome examples of William’s experiments: