Play the System
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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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Play the System Projects /

p388 Travel Reports

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The book focuses on the travels that connected the two brothers, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt. For both of them, it was important to ‘experience’ new knowledge and insights into the unknown in the truest sense of the word. The places travelled by the Humboldt brothers are marked in the texts. A fine line connects the places where the brothers met or could have met—because they were rarely in the same place at the same time. The splendid, surprisingly colorful design of the catalog is based on the classicist style of many of Alexander von Humboldt's original publications. The impressive folios of the time are characterized by generous white space, blocked lettering, verse setting, fine lines, and refined graphic details, as well as artistic copperplate engravings, often colored with pastel yet intense colors.