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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 /

w35 Planned Work

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

Typography as a system that creates systems: Inspired by the designer Anthony Froshaug, the students create poetry.

Write a poem that does not have to rhyme. Black out the less interesting words in the given text The Paradox of Our Time (Bob Moorehead, 1995)

Place the transparent grid on top of the poem, then place a sheet of transparent paper on top. Color in the corresponding grid areas (squares) over the words that remain free.

Arrange the green shapes on the enclosed paper grid. Find a nice composition. Scan the sheet.

Place the scan on the background layer of an InDesign document. Position your poem (or part of it) in any font you choose. Only place the text on the areas defined by the green shapes.

Print the poem on the painted-over transparent paper.