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 /

p399 Variable Visual Systems

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Static design systems meet their limits when it comes to translating dynamic identity and its diverse messages into the visual. In Variable Visual Systems, Nils Hölscher devotes himself to the task of determining the fluidity of design elements and thereby examining, categorizing, and describing possible variable parameters. To this end, he compares various philosophical and creative positions (including those of Niklas Luhman, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Ulrike Felsing, Martin Lorenz, and Karl Gerstner), analyzes various flexible design systems, and conducts numerous graphic experiments. Fluid spaces of variation in visual systems make it possible to draw on this spectrum to formulate precise and diverse messages. The 200-page book is supplemented by a series of animated posters and the prototype of an experimental variable font.