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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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p254 Not in Our Name

Must design protest or sell? Design can be both a means of political expression and a sales tool. But which is the more desirable purpose? Is it necessary to use design to express one's opinion on current political issues, to make one's voice heard? Or is it our job to promote products and companies, to characterize and shape their image? Are we perhaps unconsciously making a political statement by the way we choose to display something, and is the decision for or against a client or product already a small protest? Based on these statements, Laura Holst asked herself whether this very political attitude is not completely at odds with the purpose of design, which is to make something appealing to people and to market something. Or is this very attitude necessary for design to be truly free? To take this question to the extreme, she has set herself the task of marketing freedom and has created a series of advertising posters for freedom.