Josh Nimoy, 2009.

Josh Nimoy is an artist, designer, technologist and digital thing-maker that creates innovative aesthetic tools with custom software. He develops the code for use in his own commissions (music videos, ads, installations, performances) and makes some of them freely available for use and modification online. His CV is encyclopedic and includes things like writing custom code for use in the visual effects for the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” video (i.e. the biggest hit in the world at the moment).

The coolest thing about his work, and the reason I’m sharing it on the blog, is that many of Josh’s hand-rolled software toys are available for free download. Some of them are very inspiring and can be easily used as idea-generators for almost anyone – designers, musicians, graphic artists, or just anybody who wants a simple widget to make really cool images.

I certainly haven’t made it through all of them, but here are a few of my favorites:

Pinch (2008)

withDRAWal (2009)

GRL Graffiti Brush (2007)