Play the System is a new book from Slanted that functions as a reader, an introduction, and an illustrated archive to bring together theory, education and practice to make system-based and parametric design accessible to readers beyond the design discipline.
In graphic design the focus is rarely on the spontaneous stroke of genius and more on 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 centred 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 uses selected examples from design history and academic teaching to demonstrate how even minimal changes to individual parameters such as size, colour, 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 such as 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. It has its own website to complement the book with additional content and which serves as the central data source for all projects published through an automated web-to-print process.
Slanted, 320pp, 16cm x 24cm, illustrated paperback with flaps, open thread stitching, poster as dust-jacket, 2026
