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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 /

w43 Structure & Movement

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

The respective working groups implement the findings from their research in a workshop. This provides the students with inspiration for their further design process: The idea of ​​“deriving many different constellations from one structure” (Gerstner, Designing Programs) is tested on-site: Do the developed rules actually set the given gray areas in motion? Do the new constellations achieve the desired different effects?

 → Create several groups of 4×4 elements from the 16 given grayscale areas. Each grayscale element must be used once. Choose one of the resulting patterns.

 → Quadruple your selected group of area elements. Combine these four groups into a grid of 8×8 areas. You are free to choose the method: by repeatedly rotating, mirroring, translating, etc.

 → Develop a rule that allows you to modify your 8×8 grid. For example, every second area element can be swapped with the next. Finalize your final design.