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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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p252 Nostalgia for the Future

For a long time, the future was a word that sounded like a promise, like a secret. A universe of possibilities that can only needs to be reached. A bachelor's thesis about our generation as a post-futuristic one, in search of the aesthetics of the future and its defining moment. In her work, Melanie Schwarz analyzes how images and products of the future have become clichés and how the future itself has become kitsch. She analyzes the design patterns of futurism and questions their survival and validity in 2020, given the realities of life such as climate change and the post-growth economy. She contrasts the futurists' thirst for the future with her own generation's search for perspective, and assesses the tendency towards nostalgia in digital graphic design as a logical conclusion of our time. In the style of science fiction, she asks what would happen if publishing went virtual and creates a vision of the future of the dwindling print medium. In doing so, she creates new media realities, discovers unusual typographic spaces, and incorporates historical book printing techniques. In the end, everything will be better in the future, even the images and visions.