What Hairstyles in Digital Animation Say About Race and Power

John Maeda
4 min readDec 31, 2020
Stick figure with perpendicular vector field for hair
Drawing a perpendicular field of vectors is quite trivial when rendered as computer code.

I have straight hair. Extremely straight, spiky hair. It’s super rigid. And because of its rigidity, it sticks up on its own when it’s cut short.

This fact never struck me as noteworthy until I moved from Seattle to Boston for college, and I happened to have…

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John Maeda

John Maeda: Technologist and product experience leader that bridges business, engineering, design via working inclusively. Currently VP Design and A.I. at MSFT.