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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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p294 Racing standstill

Better, faster, higher—more! In the last decade in particular, this trend has led our everyday life and work almost to the point of absurdity. The sociologist and political scientist Hartmut Rosa (*1965) established the term Racing standstill for this. He compares our accelerated society to a constantly descending escalator: while we try to climb up as quickly as possible in the opposite direction, it keeps accelerating so that our pace of life gets faster, but we end up standing still in the same place—Racing standstill. The pace of life has therefore increased, and with it stress, hectic, and time pressure. Although we are gaining enormous amounts of time in almost all areas of social life through technological acceleration, we are not gaining any time. Our challenge is therefore to find time to take a deep breath in our own oases of deceleration. Laura Drews wants to raise awareness of this paradoxical construct of our modern society and critically examine the associated loss of self-determination.