Topic:

Playfully serious and seriously Playful

Brief description:

Every design begins with constraints. Whether it’s the project, time, your own skills, or the client’s expectations, these limitations shape every decision. But the key isn’t just accepting them – it’s adding your own. Choosing a format, setting rules for color, deciding on text or images. These self-imposed boundaries create structure, like the rules of a game. And within those rules? That’s where creativity thrives. Limits don’t stifle freedom – they sharpen it. They help you see possibilities more clearly, make decisions faster, and find joy in playing within the boundaries you’ve set.

In a series of exercises freely inspired by »Designing Programmes« from Karl Gerstner we will play within the rules, set our own rules, change them again, and set rules for others. The range of outcomes will be quite diverse, ranging from your own typeface to posters and visual systems.

Biography:

Tobias Röttger has been teaching regularly at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Film Academy Ludwigsburg. He received a degree in Visual Communication from the University of Applied Sciences Mainz (Diploma), and spent one semester abroad at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Wallpaper* Magazine nominated him as one of the best design graduates, and he was a finalist for the Newcomer award by the German Design Council. For eight years he worked as a designer and art director for HORT, founded by Eike König, in Frankfurt and Berlin. He is a regular jury member of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. He also guest lectures at workshops, various Universities, and events both in Germany and abroad e.g. University of Art and Design Halle, University of the Arts Bremen, Bauhaus University Dessau and Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

Stahl R is a Berlin based collaborative design practice founded in 2013 by Tobias Röttger and Susanne Stahl. The studio creates unique design solutions for a broad range of clients from the commercial and the cultural fields. Their highly varied output has been rewarded with national and international awards. They work in a diverse range of design disciplines: from visual identities, publication design, environmental design, editorial and art direction, to time-based media and digital projects.Since 2024 they are both members of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale).