Gestalt Error 409 – Design & Diskurs

Designdebatte #2: Idealismus im Designstudium

Design school often focuses on the underestimated power of design to create a better world. But when they enter the workforce, many designers realize that everyday reality looks quite different. This often leads to disappointment, endless job hunting, or a move to other industries. Should designers be more honestly prepared for this world? And above all: How realistic is the positive influence of designers outside of nonprofit projects? Our guest this evening:

Betty Schimmelpfennig

Betty Schimmelpfennig is a professor of cross-media design and managing partner/co-founder of Elastique. She creates interdisciplinary work at the intersection of analog and digital—with people at the center between real and virtual states of matter and tipping points. Her work has received numerous awards. She is active on juries and as a mentor at the ADC and DDC, among other roles.

Charlie Singer-Fischer

Charlie Singer-Fischer is a graphic designer. Her work focuses on visual identities, typographic systems, and web and print design. In 2024, she won the Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg Award for design-critical texts. The work was published under the title “Between the Lines. AI – Brave New Future?” by niggli Verlag.

Marco Kellhammer

Marco Kellhammer explores the role design plays in transformation processes—how design research, visions of the future, and real-world experiments help make change visible, negotiable, and effective in everyday life. Even before completing his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich, he co-founded überkochen e.V., and since 2018 he has been actively involved in promoting hands-on learning formats on nutrition and the environment in school education.

Gestalt Error 409 is a blog that has been examining, questioning and discussing design practice and theory since 2022. For WDC 2026, there is now a discursive programme in which current and classic questions of design are to be critically and productively examined.