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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 / Workshops /

w38 Potential Poem

Each working group will implement the insights gained from the research in a workshop, providing fellow students with inspiration for their own design process:

Inspired by the Oulipo writers' group and concrete poetry, the students are encouraged to search for new word constellations.

→ Now it’s time to write the poem: Use the three given words and follow the rhyme scheme aabbcc—lines 1 and 2 rhyme, as do 3 and 4, and so on. Place the noun in the first line, the verb in the third, and the adjective in the fifth. All other words are up to you.

 → The poem contains these three words. The rhyme scheme aabbcc’guides you from verse to verse: line 1 rhymes with line 2, line 3 with line 4, and so on. In addition, the three words should be inserted into the first line of each rhyme. The verb belongs in the third line and the adjective in the fifth line.

→ Now the poem is changed, but do not stick to the meaning:

→ Choose a vowel (a, e, i, o, u). Every noun that does not contain this vowel is replaced by a noun with the vowel. Example: Tank becomes Kanne. (tank/jug).

→ A alliteration is found for each noun and placed before the noun. Example: nimble fox, racing rat.

→ Roll a number for each verse. The number rolled determines the word that stays. Everything else is crossed out.

Transfer the remaining words to a sheet of paper, but keep their position within the poem's structure.