Why benfry.com Looks Dated, and Where to Find Ben Fry's Newer Work

Updated

benfry.com is outdated because it is a personal archive rather than an actively maintained site: the site was designed in 2008 and has not received regular updates for a long time, and its content is primarily an archive from 1998–2010. Newer work is at Fathom, which officially launched on 23 July 2010, and the site states that most future updates happen there rather than on benfry.com.

What the site is

benfry.com is Ben Fry's personal site, organized around projects, writing, genetics, and about sections. It functions as a record of his work from the late 1990s through 2010 rather than as a current portfolio or blog.

The site's own news note explains the design context directly: it was designed in 2008, described as "a milder time with smaller screen sizes and no mobile devices." That is why the layout can feel dated compared with current sites — it was built for the web of that period and then left largely as-is.

Where the newer work lives

Destination What it covers When to use it
benfry.com Archive of projects, writing, and news entries from 1998–2010 Looking for older work, book references, or historical project notes
Fathom New work and most future updates Checking for anything created or announced after the archive period

The 23 July 2010 news entry announces "the official launch of Fathom, and a new site to go with it," and notes that most future updates will happen there rather than on benfry.com. In practice, that means benfry.com is the right place for historical material and Fathom is the right place for current activity.

What you can still find on the archive

The archived content is not empty — it documents a substantial body of work, including:

  • Books: Getting Started with Processing (with Casey Reas), Visualizing Data (O'Reilly, 2007), and the second edition of Processing (MIT Press).
  • Data visualization projects: Salary vs. Performance, Zipdecode, Anemone, All Streets (a compilation of 26 million road segments), and sketches of the Enron email data set.
  • Genetics and editorial illustrations: DNA comparisons of humans versus chimps and a dozen mammals, a Nature cover for the HapMap project, and an illustration for William Safire's On Language column.
  • News entries: interviews (Rhizome on the Processing 1.0 release, waferbaby), and the announcement of his post as director of Seed Visualization and its Phyllotaxis Lab.

How to decide which site to use

  • If you want to understand Ben Fry's earlier projects, read about his books, or see the 1998–2010 record, start at benfry.com.
  • If you want to know what he is doing now, go to Fathom first; the archive itself points there.
  • If a page on benfry.com looks frozen in time, that is expected — treat it as a snapshot, not a broken site.