Don’t forget to play: INTL’s new platform brings together creative coding and self-expression

INTL, a community of designers and creative minds that work and thrive across diverse domains, has announced a new and exciting project: The Playground - a space for creative coding and digital tools. With this initiative, INTL wants to bridge the gap between creativity and cutting-edge technology and begin a fruitful dialogue on digital tools and what could be possible through coding and experimentation.

This platform aims to collaborate with creative coders around the world and host existing projects and tools in order to make us explore, experiment and think creatively with and for digital tools and their role in our process of self-expression. The Playground creators want to “know”: How can digital tools encourage play? How can code be used for expression? Can code be used in an organic way? Can digital tools encourage us to be more human?

Klee: The interactive design tool

Playground kicks off its creative journey with Klee, a tool developed through a collaboration between Warriors Studio and Kiel Mutschelknaus. Klee allows you to draw with images, draw with type, choreograph motions, craft your own brush, upload images, and export custom drawing animations. The tool is named Klee after artist and Bauhaus teacher Paul Klee who described the line as being the foundation of all art and architecture. He describes “taking a line for a walk” in his Pedagogical Sketchbook: “An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk’s sake.”

In the words of Beth Wilson from INTL, "Klee is about enjoying the primal and instinctive notion of drawing but in a new context." 

A new digital era of limitless possibilities

“Making tools is what makes us humans; what separates us from animals. It is quite literally the dividing line between us and primates. Extending this evolutionary history to the digital realm makes sense. Maybe it’s the next evolutionary sense. Digital becomes the new reality. Cyberspace the new jungle”, said Kiel Mutschelknaus.

Klee and The Playground represent a digital era where creativity and digital tools come together to form a world where code and human expression coexist and co-create. Digital tools are not just tools, they are extensions of our imagination, so the possibilities are endless.

In the end it’s all about play, experimentation. As Beth Wilson puts it, “We hope people feel joy and reconnect with the pleasure of drawing for drawing’s sake”.

Explore Klee and create here.