I am a designer and typographer, based in the south of Germany. I am apply­ing my skillset in the fields of corpo­rate, inter­active and spa­tial design, con­stantly chal­leng­ing the limits of given design and inter­ac­tion theory.

In my last book "Analog Algo­rithm - Source-Related Grid Sys­tems" I am dealing with the axioms of Karl Gerstner and their con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­tation.

I am currently editing the anthology "The Age of Data - Embracing Algo­rithms in Art & Design", a book that intro­duces 40 artists and designers work­ing in the fields of data and machine intelligence.

But originally I studied art as a teacher until my pro­fes­sor thought I would be better off in com­mer­cial art. Until then, the study sub­ject of "com­mu­ni­cation design" was com­plete­ly un­known to me.

Some­where until the mid 1990s, I'd rather paint record covers and tattoos for the southern Bavar­ian Straight Edge scene. Then I went to study typogra­phy. Here we are...

These free projects are a kind of vent and also a hobby. I'm al­ways curious to try things out.

At the moment, also due to the lock­down, there is no real sep­a­ra­tion of work and free time, there never was, but espe­cially not now. That means I'm work­ing on various com­mis­sioned and free projects at the same time. With the school closures, how­ever, this has be­come a chal­lenge for most par­ents because it is un­pre­dictable. You juggle your way through the day, the week, the month...

But after this year of down scaled social contacts, I can notice that there is a per­ma­nent com­mu­ni­ca­tion on all channels. The im­por­tance of the ex­change comes to the fore­ground. It doesn't matter if it's via direct mes­sag­ing, zooms or tra­di­tion­al phone calls in be­tween. We have left these hurdles behind and created a virtual coexis­tence that def­i­nite­ly brings people closer together.

The basic idea for this came about 2013, during dif­fer­ent jobs. I noticed that generative design was some­times used as an omni­direc­tional weapon. How­ever, one turns in circles, because an already defined result is im­posed on the most di­verse prob­lems. My goal was to write a man­ual that supports the code-savvy designer in finding project-spe­ci­fic solutions.

The technique used for this I derived on the one hand from Kandinsky's "Analyt­ical Drawing". In his Bauhaus lectures, he always started from a real object, such as a still life or a figure, in order to extract a grid-con­struct from it, which was then the basis for further design ex­per­i­ments. The axioms of Karl Gerstner's "Designing Pro­grams" provided the link to algo­rithm-supported design.

Therefore I can answer the second question with a clear yes. For jobs like logo design, layout grids or fonts for Detroit­Under­ground™ this design principle has often been of great service to me.

You always have to experiment and keep your eyes open. Many small ideas, which are born in free pro­jects, find their use later within real jobs. I am not focused to a specific dis­ci­pline, but work in the most diverse areas of design, so you also align your­self to the most diverse figures. These do not always have to be profession-related.

For me it is exciting to browse through mono­graphs of painters, I think of repre­sen­ta­tives of the more re­al­is­tic form of expres­sion. Tim Eitel, Franz Gertsch, Rudolf Hausner or Horst Janssen.

I am lucky to be able to show the amaz­ing work of 40 con­tem­po­rary artists and designers in my new book...

Over the past two years, I have con­ducted inter­views and dis­cus­sions, planned and trashed, until a 400-page work is now on the table. Global pio­neers of data-driven design share their pro­jects and give behind-the-scene looks at some of the most genre-redefin­ing work, pro­vid­ing in­sights and out­looks on how it influences our current and future reality.

"The Age of Data" looks at the bench­mark of algo­rithm-based design, as if in a time freeze. Like already mentioned, 40 inter­na­tion­ally renowned artists and designers from typog­raphy to 3D ani­ma­tion to stage design provide an eye-level view of their work. We see for the first time how these extra­or­di­nary pro­jects came into exis­tence, where the impulses came from and which ob­sta­cles and surprises there were during the execution.

From Refik Anadol to Tina Touli and Random International, the dis­course is what new pos­si­bil­i­ties of expression this par­a­digm shift in design, now and in the years to come, will bring. "The Age of Data" is an image-heavy text­book, that shows the future of art and design in this day and age. It is an invi­ta­tion to take the next step as well as a moti­va­tion to keep up with the on­go­ing data-based design evolution.

I am lucky to have found a partner in niggli publishers to realize this super interesting project with the support of Kickstarter.