In graphic design, the focus is rarely on the spontaneous stroke of genius—it’s rather about a process-oriented approach to design. Digital tools, algorithms, and systems increasingly shape not only the final outcome but also the process itself. As a result, the role of the designer is changing: instead of crafting every detail, they increasingly design the framework in which design emerges.

Over more than twenty years of teaching, Heike Grebin has developed an approach centered on this shift. Its main appeal lies in developing dynamic systems that both guide and inspire the design process. Design is generated by a set of specifications whose effects can be explored, varied, and used creatively—this is parametric design.

Play the System demonstrates, through selected examples from design history and academic teaching, how even minimal changes to individual parameters such as size, color, spacing, or movement—driven by input values, chance, or external influences—lead to different outcomes and open up space for variation, experimentation, and surprise.

Conversations with designers, programmers, and researchers such as Luna Maurer, Anja Groten, Frieder Nake, and Tom Bieling address key questions: How do systems foster—or limit—creativity? How do tools influence aesthetic decisions? And how can design respond to the structures of society itself?

As a hybrid publication, Play the System operates systemically itself. The website complements the book with additional content and serves as the central data source for all projects published through an automated web-to-print process.

Play the System is a reader, an introduction, and a richly illustrated archive—all in one. Bringing together theory, education, and practice, it makes system-based and parametric design accessible to readers beyond the design discipline. ISBN: 978-3-948440-97-8.

Diktgymnasiet is an artist and writer based in Stockholm. Working primarily from bed due to chronic illness (M.E., myalgic encephalomyelitis), they use language as their main material, exploring self-care, chronic illness, and disability justice. The artist remains anonymous as part of a long-term stress-management strategy.

Portrait is an artist book by Diktgymnasiet, designed by Konst & Teknik. The work references (copies) one of the most accessable, familiar and relatable printed matter there is; a simple spiral bound notebook.

The typography combines ABC Walter Alte with Arial Monospaced and OpenDyslexic, thus mixing free and more exclusive typefaces to reflect questions of access, value, and distribution within publishing. They also just look great together.

LifeInOneRoom.com is a digital publication where the artist continuously shares fragments of their practice online, piece by piece, according to daily capacity and energy. The title refers to the apartment the artist is rarely able to leave. Accessibility is central to the site’s design: texts can be read aloud through an auto-reading function using randomly generated voices, the platform is RSS compatible, and it uses the typeface OpenDyslexic, developed specifically to support readers with dyslexia.

Both works are part of CRIP, a project that investigates how art institutions can sustainably collaborate with chronically ill and disabled artists while developing care-based production methods.

As part of the launch and Diktgymnasiet’s exhibition at Konstfrämjandet in Stockholm, T-shirts and a campaign for SoMe was launched, mixing the fonts used into a tour T-shirt with the three launch stops in 2025.

MAISON Ë is a contemporary magazine celebrating design, culture, and craftsmanship through carefully curated content. Positioned at the crossroads of design, architecture, fashion, and culture, MAISON Ë explores spaces, objects, and ideas that shape a thoughtful way of life.

With a timeless aesthetic, its visual identity is defined by the prominent use of the Rizoma typeface, from R-Typography, on the logotype and for the headlines. Text typefaces include Chamberí (Extratype) and Suisse Int’l (Swiss Typefaces), with some sprinkles of Dinamo’s ABC Honeymoon.

Marzia Migliora’s works provide a critical representation of the consequences that an economy based on fossil fuels is having on the planet, showing how humanity’s drive for progress has a direct impact on today’s compromised ecosystems. The environmental sound installation Partitura multispecie andante – created in collaboration with the historic Roman studio of sound effects for cinema, Marinelli Effetti Sonori – consists of a soundtrack of the various sections that make up the paleontological and litho-mineralogical collections of ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale) (Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research).

Act ① of Partitura multispecie andante (Andante Multispecies Score) was performed on December 14, 2022, at the MUCIV (Museo delle Civiltà), with sound effects by Marinelli Effetti Sonori Srl. The performance was made possible thanks to funding from Sector VI of the Ministry of Culture.

Sound effects: Marinelli Effetti Sonori Srl

Foley artists: Massimo Marinelli, Giulia Marinelli, Enzo Di Liberto, Daniele Di Pentima

Sound editor: Enrico Mereu

Recording and mix engineer: Fabio Fortunati

Technical director: Edoardo Pietrogrande
Curation: Matteo Lucchetti

The vinyl records were cut by Vinylab Studio in an edition of ninety copies plus nine artist’s proofs. The typography uses ABC Walter Neue throughout.

Grüne Dächer. Geschichte, Planung, Gestaltung presents sixteen pioneering green roof projects across Switzerland as a cohesive dossier, combining architectural cross-sections with ecological research to create an accessible atlas of sustainable urban habitats. Authored by Jonas Frei and published by Edition Hochparterre in Zürich with Stephan Brenneisen (ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences). The book was designed by Upset in collaboration with Valentin Hindermann. The cover features embossed black foil, and the publication is produced using Swiss brochure binding, giving it a tangible, dossier-like presence.

Typography is set in ABC Walter Neue, designed by Dinamo in collaboration with Omnigroup. For this project, Upset customized the typeface with squared dots on select characters—an adaptation realized with permission from Dinamo—giving the atlas a distinctive typographic voice while maintaining the structural clarity of Walter’s design.

Tre Mari is an Italian bakery and deli in Toronto’s St. Clair West neighborhood that has been open since 1960. Now in its third generation, they worked with Blok Design to reimagine their identity, packaging, and visual system.

The new identity features my typeface Condor in Compressed and Condensed widths, Displaay’s Avantt and Lineto’s LL Brown, punctuated by moments of Dinamo’s ABC Honeymoon. The logo is typeset in Ivar Headline from Letters from Sweden, with a custom head serif on the A, a featured carried forward from the bakery’s previous logo.

The folks at Blok Design were kind enough to share their motivations:

With this identity our goal was to bring a staple of the community forward without losing who they are. Tre Mari is very much a family business with many different characters all coming together. To express this we knew we would like a diverse typographic language and colour palette that evoked their bold, playful side while still holding their Italian heritage and strong family roots. We felt that the final identity evokes these classic elements of Italian/ European design while still feeling contemporary, fresh and bold.

Golden PMS and embossed typeface for the Visages exhibition, a group show by Almine Rech.

Visages as shown in Gstaad

settantaventidue is a cultural hub dedicated to contemporary arts, sound arts, architecture, design, radical thinking and visual culture. It was founded by Alessandro Scotti and Daniel Marzona in Milano, in November 2024.

Tomo Tomo designed the identity of the space and all the printed and digital materials, working with the limited budget as a design asset. They used only black and white and one typeface family, ABC Walter Alte.

For each exhibition or performance, a printed publication is produced. It serves as a record of the event and a collector's item that conveys the vision of the featured artist through its form and layout.

After the long anticipated font update from v0.1 to v0.2, Harald Peter Ström could finally add a CV to his personal website. Before that, the designer of Konst & Teknik used Electric Blue only on his front page. He requested the urgently needed diacritics on Future Fonts right after the release of version 0.1. “Guuuuys, i love this so much but my name doesnt work properly… any chance of a scandi version soon featuring åäö ÅÄÖ ? /peter stroem”

Font Spectrum’s Daniël Maarleveld and Edgar Walthert just have been really busy with other thing to finish the entire set of accents. Just dropping a few Middle European ones, as a patch, did not seem right for everyone else.

Recently, Harald Peter Ström added an animated loader to his CV page which makes use of the transforming abilities of variable fonts. The loader revolves through the weights in a wave motion.

The Index and Work pages use Weiß-Antiqua for everything. The bouncing “2025” device that references the iconic DVD logo screensaver has numerals from ABC Walter Neue.

When entering the website, all the pills rotate before they find their horizontal position. The background color changes according to the width of the browser window. If one does note interact with the page, everything gets blurry.

The animated GIF was made with a QuickTime screen grab and then made into a GIF with the help of ezgif.com

CV page of Peter Ström, entirely set in Electric Blue. The bottom of the page is faded out and gets thicker on scroll – one of the advantages of variable fonts.

The index with Harald Peter Ström’s work features Weiß-Antiqua (URW’s digitization).

Another sub-url called work.peter.stream. Weiß-Antiqua is one of the classic typefaces that still looks en vogue thanks to its slightly eccentric details.

Dazed Maxx is a special new edition of Dazed magazine, created in collaboration with Nike to spotlight the vibrant subcultures of sport across the United States. Edited by athletes Sunny Choi, Bijan Robinson, and Tobey McIntosh, it explores emerging communities in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta through interviews, storytelling, and Nike’s AirImagination platform. The issue dives deep into how local sports scenes shape cultural identities, featuring conversations with community leaders and original articles from young local writers. Dazed Maxx is not just about sports but about how creativity, identity, and community intersect through athletic expression.

To celebrate the launch, Dazed is hosting simultaneous drop events in the three cities, offering limited-edition copies, custom merchandise, and immersive experiences that bring the magazine’s stories to life. They use three different typefaces to differentiate the cites: Los Angeles has Respira Black by Sharp Type, a robust yet elegant Rotunda, New York was illustrated with what appears to be ER Univers, and finally Atlanta used Louize Display by 205TF. Blending sport, subculture, and innovation, Dazed Maxx reflects a bold new era of community-driven storytelling and marks the first-ever US edition of Dazed.

Additional fonts in use include Compacta Black (Letraset/Linotype) for the logo and various members of Dinamo’s ABC Diatype for smaller text.

Footnotes issue E front cover

Footnotes is a type design periodical published biennially by La Police. The fifth issue opens with an article by Florian Hardwig on Permanent drawn by Karlgeorg Hoefer, a seemingly-forgotten German Grotesk that designers worldwide have studied-by-drawing off-grid.

Thanks to Sébastien Morlighem, we're now well aware that Pierre-Louis Vafflard cut types for the Didot dynasty, beautiful ones.

The third essay, from the One-off series – contextual type projects from graphic designers – sheds some light on the Belgian figure of Fernand Baudin through a digital re-enactment of his many (hand)writings by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé.

The last contribution overlaps theory with practise, past with present. A designer’s journey, from the educational binder of Swiss teacher Walter Käch full of lessons to digital redrawings of his template letterforms by Dinamo and Omnigroup (ABC Walter Neue and ABC Walter Alte).

To conclude, the traditional last page entitled Proofs showcases in-progress typefaces from the contributors: Mercator (Laurenz Brunner), Zero, Ninety, Linus (Charles Mazé), LP Jung, Olympia Manuscript No. 4 (Mathieu Christe), Walter Compressed, Slab, Mono (Dinamo, Omnigroup), and Didot Vafflard and Vafflard (Dávid Molnár).

As with every issue, each article is typeset with the related typeface(s), some in-progress and unreleased. The generous iconography also tries to pleasantly surprise the reader with unpublished material.

Footnotes issue E: article 19

Footnotes issue E: article 19: This spread showcases six digital versions of Permanent drawn by (from left to right): Laurenz Brunner, Fabian Harb, Mathieu Christe, Lorenzo Mason, Connor Davenport, Alberto Malossi.

Footnotes issue E: article 20

Footnotes issue E: article 21

Footnotes issue E: article 22

Footnotes issue E: Proofs: On the left a real offset printing testing space to the authors and previously unseen designs to the readers. On the right, the index to navigate the dense content.

Someone & Others used ABC Diatype Rounded (Dinamo) and GT Pressura Mono (Grilli Type) as main fonts for the identity of skin care brand Starface. The logo is based on Haley Fiege’s Sniglet, with custom star-shaped counters.

From Margaret Andersen’s article for Wix Studio:

Starface […] takes a worldbuilding approach to brand development, and it’s become wildly popular among teens for its colorful star-shaped acne patches. Someone & Others, which developed the brand’s identity (as well as for other notable beauty brands, like Kosas and Good Weird), grounded the Starface branding with a bright yellow color palette, Y2K design elements, and an adorable, starry-eyed, smiley face character called Big Yellow that, like the Futurewise slug, serves as the main persona for brand storytelling.

Big Yellow anthropomorphizes the brand’s packaging: riding roller coasters, running a book club, buying a bouncy house on TikTok (to which one of the brand’s two million followers commented, “this is so random I’m obsessed”), and commenting on brand posts from its own account. (All things one hypothetically might do with the loud confidence provided by a Starface pimple patch.)

POSSESSED is a magazine published by Paris-based running brand Satisfy. This publication is about trail, running, and culture related to these practices. This is how they are presenting the 56th issue:

This issue of POSSESSED—POSSESSED No. 56—is our inaugural print issue, and if you’re at UTMB, you can hopefully score a copy at our Chamonix Off Road Supply. If you didn’t, that’s a bummer. Still, you can check out the digital version, which features our exclusive interview with Courtney Dauwalter, our exclusive interview with her husband Kevin Schmidt, a timeline of C.D.’s incredible professional ultrarunner journey, a look inside her photo album, a nutritious Dauwalter Family recipe that you can cook at home, an up-tempo playlist of Courtney’s favorite tunes, PLUS some upper body exercises to stop you from turning into Kermit the Frog, your running stars, reader mail, lots of dumb jokes, aliens, and more!

Founded in the mid-1970s, the Osor Musical Evenings continue to adhere to its primary premise even in the fifth decade of its continuing existence – encouraging the creation of Croatian musical works. The Renaissance Cathedral of Osor, the central stage of the festival, has so far hosted nearly eight hundred concerts with over three hundred works commissioned by the festival from all generations of composers. The festival programmes, in addition to canonical classical music works from all periods, examine works of key figures of modern and contemporary music in Croatia, including Boris Papandopulo, Stjepan Šulek, Ivan Brkanović, Miroslav Miletić, Igor Kuljerić, Stanko Horvat, and others.

The visual identity for the 49th edition was designed by Neva Zidić using Stroy Grotesk and Stroy Mono by Hot Type with Dinamo’s ABC Honeymoon.

Under the theme of “Imagine Democratic Regeneration”, this yearbook explores a diverse range of artistic visions and interdisciplinary approaches on the future of liberal democracy and the democratic design of a regenerative way of life and economic culture in the age of artificial intelligence. It was published by the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs – Directorate General for International Cultural Relations, Vienna 2024. The bilingual publication (German and English) is available for download from the Ministry’s website.

Exhibition flyer

The Reflected Self: Portrait Miniatures, 1540–1850 examines the functions of portrait miniatures through the centuries, from those held in the hand of Queen Elizabeth I to their eclipse by the invention of photography.

Curated by Compton Verney and The Limner Company. The 3D exhibition design is by Ali Brown. Photography by Simon Bevan. Badrock Design is responsible for the identity, typography and 2D design.

The motif used throughout the show, based on the letter S from Didot Modern

Entrance wall of the exhibition

Directional sign

Steiner Architecture is a young firm based in Vienna and Zell am See and expertly run by Florian Oberschneider and Ferdi Porsche.

Amongst the usual letterhead, envelopes, vcards and website, the identity includes a publication design for an ongoing magazine in newspaper format – sent out to the firms friends and clients – dealing with architecture and urbanism on a theoretical yet playful level.

The publication Experimental Re(é)[flex|ct|ion] presents the results of research projects developed by participants in the first edition of the Artistic Research Lab at Casino Display.

Guided by their desire to destabilise and question the constraints they encountered, and strengthened by the discussions that took place over three weeks of in situ research, the book presents work resulting from experiments around the concepts of community, uncertainty, resistance, hybridity, preconceived expectations, movement and alternative.

The publication features a coloured edge, open stitch binding and hot foil press on the cover. Dinamo’s ABC Walter Neue is used for titling and on the cover, accompanied by Out of the Dark’s Remix A for body copy.

Typography! Techno! Bowling!

Centre label designs for KiNK’s For The People EP on Hypercolour, marking their 100th release on the label.

Jamie Russell and Alex Jones set up the Hypercolour imprint back in 2006 and the label continues to dish up genre-bending bangers two decades down the line. For the label’s milestone 100th release, KiNK cues up a killer four-track release with ‘For The People’.

One of house music’s most in-demand producers and remixers, KiNK has delivered time and time again for labels such as Running Back, Royal Oak, Macro and his own Sofia Records label, and so it’s with great honour that the Bulgarian artist commemorates the label’s centenary with a kaleidoscopic bundle of hyperactive bangers!

Featuring Dinamo’s Diatype Rounded, supported by Velvetyne’s CirrusCumulus as well as Futura Black and Extra Bold Condensed.

[More info on Discogs]

A selection of pages from the A4 handouts printed for each exhibition

ISSUES is a contemporary art gallery in central Stockholm, initially set up as an ambulancing space in 2014 by Oscar Carlson, Johan af Geijerstam, Julia Eriksson and Peter Ström.

Between 2014 and 2021 the gallery produced thirteen shows around Stockholm, where the geographical location was of equal importance as the artist. For Issues #3 in 2015, Ryan Trecartin’s work CENTER JENNY was shown in the local Mediamarkt store on all 196 TV screens simultaneously. For Issues #4 in 2017, a group exhibition took place in an (at the time) empty space on Södermalm shaped like a display window, where the artworks were rotated every fifteen minutes in order to let that specific space come to its fullest.

Because of these new physical and geographical locations, the visual identity for the gallery was changed each time, adopting different typographic references to the current space.

In 2021 a more permanent space on Vattugatan 13 was found, turning the gallery into a commercial one in a fixed location – at least for the time being.

A permanent design system was introduced with the new space, where the location was less important – almost the opposite, as the new space was in a location almost unheard of even for the most hardcore Stockholmer, in an area filled with governmental buildings.

The design system takes its starting points in concrete poetry and early computer art (mainly ASCII) using Vincent Chan’s Quadrant Text Mono, complemented with the addition of a typeface and treatment picked for every artist – giving each artist their own visual identity connected to the space. Each typeface and treatment picked either refers to the artist’s practice or is connected to the idea of a place in downtown Stockholm – or in some cases, both.

The grid is based the word “ISSUES” written 16 by 10.5 times on an A4 sheet — because, you know, too many ISSUES…

The visual identity for ISSUES 4 took its typographic starting points in the typeface Eurostile found at the logo of a left over vacuum cleaner in the space.

The new space at Vattugatan 13 uses Quadrant Text Mono on all its signage and printed matter, as well as on the website and social media.

Insta stories using frame-by-frame tap animations, mixing ASCII and logo typography in ABC Honeymoon

Selected front and back covers from the A4-sized catalogue that comes with each exhibition.

Covers featuring Brush Script, Crowbar, Horizontal, and Jannon

Insta stories featuring P22 Arts and Crafts, Antique Olive Nord, Purple Haze, and PC Myungjo

For most of the shows, merchendise has been made in order to promote the shows with and to the local community and scene that ISSUES is part of. Reflective wests for Henning Hamilton using ABC Maxi Round, gym bottles for Hampus Wernemyr in Jannon, hats for Zoe Barca in Monaako, and candy, T-shirts and mugs in Quadrant Text Mono.

For DOWNTOWN ISSUES 2 in September 2023, one T-shirt with a typographic identity was designed for each participating artist printed in a single copy only. Seen here is a selection of the almost 70 T-shirts in total.

A few examples: The typography for Elis Monteverde Burrau with Tesla references the big amount of Teslas in the neighbourhood (and indicates where this Swedish poet might be heading in the future?). The typography for Georg Nordmark in Amsi references local pet food chain Arket Zoo because of Georg’s interest in animals in his art. The typography for Militza Monteverde Burrau uses Dinamo’s ABC Honeymoon and connects to her organic sculptures in glass. The typography for Ilja Karilampi links to his meme lord status via its use of Impact. Siri Carlén was treated with the never-to-be-released Småländsk Antikva by Konst & Teknik – which started around the same time Siri was a student of Konst & Teknik at Konstfack. Viktor Fordell got a Ford logo knockoff typeface because of... you know... Ford.

The non-personal T-shirts come with one front cover and three different back versions: The big 2 is based on the most downtown building Stockholm offers, parking house Parkaden and its beautiful brutalist numbering system and fascade. “DOWN TOWN” refers to local clothing brand Our Legacy WORK SHOP that is often seen on T-shirts around town. A version of the T-shirt with all the artist names overprinted was made in an extra limited edition of only five copies. All T-shirts printed in white ink on black fabric by Everynight Studios.

Fonts in USE!