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is a platform for parametric design in graphic design. It documents the work of students and teachers at the Department of Design at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), who are investigating the significance of the system as a conceptual model and design method under the title “Parametric Design in Graphic Design.”

Design is less about intuitive, even ingenious “strokes of genius” and more about a holistic and rule-based (systemic and systematic) process of gaining knowledge and shaping form. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to design dynamic systems that both guide and inspire the design process.

Parametric design refers to this design in and of systems—with rules, their modes of operation, and systematic manipulability. The research project, led by Prof. Heike Grebin, is an integral part of teaching and aims to raise awareness of design as a performative process.

Play the System brings together selected study projects in which the system plays an important role as a design method – whether analog or digital. The works are created in a fruitful symbiosis of theory, design, and technology. Socially relevant issues and positions from philosophy, art, and avant-garde design from around 1900 to the present day are repeatedly discussed.

Play the System is an invitation to become aware of the systemic competence of graphic design and to gain the maturity to use the tools of digital design critically.

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c25 Politics in Motion

This course explores three aspects of our identity as graphic designers, connecting them and translating them into “moving posters”:
1. Design is systemic and systematic: “As designers, we think in systems,” says Mitchell Paone (DIA Studio). “We think about motion first and implement it systematically across our work. The aesthetic emerges from the system itself—with infinite variations.”
2. Technology shapes visual aesthetics: Coding is today what the broad nib was in the Renaissance. For Hansje van Halem, design “is more like gaming—what happens if...?” Her collaboration with Just van Rossum for the Lowlands Festival turned out to be a perfect partnership: “I explained my rules, and he developed the typeface system.”
3. Design is political: “Design is political because it intervenes in the world,” writes Friedrich von Borries in To Projectthe World. “The political itself can be a concrete subject of design.”
Originally titled Repetition, Pattern, and Rhythm, this course links systemic, technological, and social dimensions of design through experimental exploration. But the world is falling apart, and posters with moving patterns are not enough to educate people about the importance of democratic conditions and to fight for fundamental rights. We mustget involved and make political posters!