The Beauty of Lacks and Limitation

A course about restricted design tools at Merz Akademie. Special Tag: Making Ideas Tangible

Made by Ulricke Schock with Apple Photo Booth. Full documentation of the course: Click here.

This course is about: Design Awareness / Composing in Boundaries / Template Distending / Breaking inflexible Patterns in Design / Carrying Ideas into Effect.


Background/Idea: Working within limitations reveals every single design step as boundaries are fixed and set. Sliding on the border line requires reflection on your own design process! This generates an advanced consciousness about designing. Furthermore, your common sense of ("good") design is bothered by look & feel of specific design software. This provocation is warmly welcome and a challenge to realize your idea within close boundaries. Get 100% satisfied despite your limitation.

Two Steps Agenda:
1. Know your software, all possibilities, looks, references. Play and create abstract, spectacular, wired, crazy or just lovely forms, shapes or type experiments. The journey is your reward. Try to bring the software to its knees! Only if you know your tool you are ready for the next step.
2. Think. Reduce. Carry your idea into effect. Take one step back and move two steps forward to an imaginative design in simplicity and strictness.

The whole documentation of the course: http://sites.google.com/site/thebeautyoflacksandlimitation/. Here are some works of the students:

Flying Pad II by Julius Schaeufele:

Tron with Google SketchUp by Andreas Reich:

The Simpsons Family was drawn with "Comic Life" by Benjamin Walther:


Drop with TextEdit by Ulricke Schock:


I'm blue - Eiffel 65
"I have a blue house with a blue window.
Blue is the colour of all that I wear.
Blue are the streets and all the trees are too.
I have a girlfriend and she is so blue."


Tears in Heaven - Eric Clapton
"Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
Beyond the door
There's peace I'm sure
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven"


"Awesome is shiny" with wordseye.com by Ingo Kollek

More more more: http://sites.google.com/site/thebeautyoflacksandlimitation/.

Used Tags

Getting over limitations:

A very beautiful example of how to get over restrictions are these real strips on the screen of a student. They became guidelines to illustrate with TextEdit:


Real glue strips as guidelines, Link