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ROKFOR: Gina Bucher, Urs Hofer, Rafael Koch

Awarded

ROKFOR: Gina Bucher / Urs Hofer / Rafael Koch

'Rokfor', a web-based design and editing system

Graphic Design

www.rokfor.ch

Jury report

A Body of Rules for Automated Design
Is it pos­si­ble to au­to­mate the de­sign of printed mat­ter? Yes, with 'Rok­for'. This web-based de­sign and edit­ing sys­tem does not ren­der the de­signer su­per­flu­ous, but rather in­volves him at an ear­lier point in the process than is usu­ally the case. The cre­ators of 'Rok­for' are Gina Bucher, jour­nal­ist, Urs Hofer, pro­gram­mer and Rafael Koch, graphic artist. The trio has in­vested three years of de­vel­op­ment work in their sys­tem. Their in­no­va­tion: de­sign is no longer a down­stream process but one that is tack­led first. Repet­i­tive tasks are au­to­mated. De­sign no longer just means giv­ing form but defin­ing rules. Ac­cord­ing to the de­vel­op­ers, 'Rok­for' aims to offer 'spe­cific and gen­er­a­tive ac­cess to graphic de­sign'; the com­puter is to as­sume the role of a ‘ma­chine that de­signs and gen­er­ates mean­ing'. The goal is an op­ti­mal in­ter­play be­tween graph­ics and pro­gram­ming. 'Rok­for' could, then, be com­pared to a Swiss army knife: a sim­ple and re­li­able tool which is easy to han­dle. 'Rok­for' can be used to de­sign books, brochures and other printed mat­ter. The sys­tem gen­er­ates both Pdf tem­plates for print­ing and web pages. 'Rok­for' can there­fore be used by both gen­eral in­sti­tu­tions and pub­lish­ing houses. While the sys­tem is de­signed to sim­plify and speed up work processes, it nev­er­the­less per­mits ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. The cal­en­dar of events of Berne Uni­ver­sity of the Arts is cre­ated using 'Rok­for'. The var­i­ous de­part­ments enter their data in the sys­tem, the graph­ics are gen­er­ated and put on the web, and fly­ers are printed. The pub­li­ca­tion 'Me / Let­ter Thrash­ers etc.' ('Ich / Buch­staben­drescher etc.') was de­signed by 'Rok­for' and pre­sents a se­lec­tion of texts by Robert A. Fis­cher (Edi­tion Patrick Frey, 2011). For the small pub­lish­ing com­pany 'Bucci Nov­e­las', the au­thors write their texts on­line in the entry fields which al­ready con­tain the chap­ter length and even the dates of sub­mis­sion. 'The work of the de­signer', the au­thors write, 'moves from de­sign­ing in­di­vid­ual doc­u­ments to gen­er­at­ing a sin­gle body of rules for the com­plete re­sult'. Ac­cord­ing to the cre­ators, de­sign is thus no longer re­ac­tive but ac­tive.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Gina Bucher
Born in
1978
Education
Journalist/Editor

Urs Hofer
Born in
1976
Education
Programmer

Web

urshofer.ch

Rafael Koch
Born in
1976
Education
Grafiker

Web

www.blokes.ch

also in

2005

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