For a few years now, generative design has been an insider tip at media art festivals and conferences. An interplay of complex information, graphic design and the opportunities provided by programming generate new, fascinating visual worlds that can visualize correlations and concurrences or allow chance to do the designing. We are experiencing a paradigm shift in design, which leads to new, formal visual worlds. Yet, the essence of this shift remains hidden to many: the possibilities of programming languages as well as processing will change the role of the designer. Until now, designers used the tools developed for them by programmers, meaning that the persons doing the designing adapted themselves to the system. Generative design transforms design-schooled users of digital tools into programmers of their own individual digital toolbox. This opens up new visual vistas and fundamentally alters the design process. In the first stage, the artisan aspect takes a back seat and is replaced by abstraction and information; capturing the meta-level. So, generativedesign does not begin with formal questions, but with the recognition of phenomena.