I first learned about Ben Fry from running across his original thesis paper on computation information design.  Apparently, he has done all kinds of additional work on the topic since his PhD thesis, which has led to a very cool new software language, Processing.  This software language is meant to both teach and be used by professionals to create visually more stunning work than can be done with most "out-of-the-box" expensive software solutions, and it's open source!

You can see more of what this cool Processing software is capable of producing by viewing some of the demos on the homepage for the software.