Language & Form

The subject Language & Form focuses on the creative use of language across different styles, genres, forms, and media. We learn to make formal and aesthetic decisions consciously within the medium of language and to develop narrative projects across genres and media.

Craft and Poetics

The teaching of linguistic and narrative techniques aims to expand students’ creative repertoire and strengthen their understanding of themselves as authors.
In seminars, we therefore develop our own narrative concerns, design contemporary narrative forms, and realize our projects through language. Alongside skills in narrative technique, dramaturgy, and style, we also gain an understanding of the poetics of language.

Between Word and Image

The complex relationship between word and image—expressed, for example, in figurative language, visual storytelling, and visual essays—is also a central subject of study.
The transfer of methods and the productive friction between linguistic procedures and design practices form the basis for discovering new techniques and modes of expression. The aim is to develop the ability to confidently combine linguistic and visual design within one’s own work.

Designers as Authors

A key aspect of the teaching is the encouragement of students’ own authorship and the development of a distinctive conceptual and linguistic voice.
This also includes the ability to reflect on one’s own artistic and design practice, to articulate individual creative decisions through language, and to develop a personal poetics—that is, one’s own understanding of design and writing—and to recognize it as an integral part of one’s identity as a designer.