Ph.D. thesis on "Product Languages" by Thilo Schwer

At the end of October 2014 HfG graduate Thilo Schwer received his doctoral degree in philosophyfrom Folkwang University of the Arts. His dissertation "Product languages – Design between one-off and industrial product" appeared in Transcript-Verlag.His dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Cordula Meier from Folkwang University and Prof. Dr. Birgit Richard from Goethe University in Frankfurt. Schwer is curently lecturing in product language in Product Design at HfG.

On the book
The world of representaionalism has changed. Prompted by the do-it-yourself aesthetic industriallly manufactured goods are ever more frequently being deprived of their clear readability. Now meaning and use are determined by consumers, who create an individual product using adaptations and additions from the preabricated. Thilo Schwer questions this phenomon of the no longer clear product language against the backdrop of Niklas Luhmann's system theory and the articles by Jochen Gros on the Offenbach approach – and in this manner the new reltaionships between man and objects more comprehenisviely than every before.