# NodeBox

Create visual output with Python programming code
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# Blines and Circloids

Boids are elements that describe leaderless groups like flocks, herds or schools, according to the algorithm made in 1986 by Craig Reynolds. Boids have no mathematical equations describing their path: they move along individually, and as a group steering clear of each other and moving in the direction everyone else is going.

Mark Geard, speaker at the AtypI 2005 conference in Helsinki, describes something called flow, the organic factor (ironically we could call this organisation) in typography and composition, which appeals to our subconscious, in contrast to predefefined and rigid technological design. Multiple attempts in our research to define composition in terms of strict grids support Geard's statement that composition (or anything else in design for that matter) requires a dosage of natural freedom: the grids didn't work, looked stale and uncomfortable.

Boids might be a way to describe natural compositions in graphic design.

Below is an example of curves drawn with a combination of the Boids library and the Cornu spline library, a spiralling curve algorithm by Raph Levien.

Some older examples, the Circloids, can be viewed here.

Created by Tom De Smedt.