Lena Weber

Your projects navigate between digital and physical experiences. What fascinates you about this connection, and how can it be realised?

Each medium imposes specific limitations that shape the aesthetics that can emerge within its context. This fascinates me immensely. Exploring these limitations, understanding them, and deliberately incorporating them into the design process continuously inspires me. Often, these limitations themselves become the subject of my work.

 

In the digital realm – particularly in creative programming – designers have the ability to exercise 100% control over the outcome through coded rules and inputs. The results are reproducible, and the designer’s decisions can be directly translated into machine processes. Endless iteration, rapid execution, the resolution of the screen, the colours it can display, and much more can all be visually explored in the digital space.

 

What happens to graphics when they transition from one medium to another? What kinds of aesthetics emerge? I find gradients – a graphic element that can be perfectly described by rules – particularly interesting and illustrative in this regard. How can a gradient be represented outside the realm of digital pixels? How does it change depending on the medium?

How do you integrate sustainability and ethical responsibility into your work?

In the digital realm, I believe sustainability often takes on a different meaning than the conventional understanding of the term. The focus shifts from physical resources – which, of course, should still be preserved as much as possible – to a sustainable, modular approach to working. Code can be reused, unnecessary repetition can be avoided, and an "energy efficiency of creation" is central to my approach.

 

In the first step, I consistently work on creating a sustainable foundation for my practice. In the second step, knowledge sharing, collective learning, and open-source concepts play a key role for me, as these are inherently tied to coding. A core principle in my work is that maximum complexity and over-engineering in design don’t necessarily lead to better results. Instead, embracing limitations and mastering the fundamentals often produces far more compelling outcomes.

 

I think there is still much to achieve in this area. Recently, I came across the term "Permacomputing," which encourages viewing design processes and digital technologies in harmony with ecological principles, using resources consciously, and prioritising long-term, sustainable value over short-term efficiency or perfection.

What challenges do you see at the intersection of technology and design?

I think we need to find a balance that equally considers both humans and machines. In the increasingly fast-paced times we live in, I often observe that technological advancements are used to design faster and more automatically – sometimes to the point where the results lack a certain “soul.”

How do users interact with your typographic systems? What approach do they take?

Since the systems are created based on clear and strict rules, I often find that this structure motivates and inspires users to break the rules in a meaningful way and explore new approaches to use the system unexpectedly. I experience this myself repeatedly.

 

Because the systems are designed modularly – often like tiles that can be arranged into endless two-dimensional patterns – users can solve an entire design task using just the system. The typeface becomes a tool that can be used, for example, to fill a poster. I find it particularly successful when the typeface is used like a Swiss Army knife to solve all design challenges. It becomes type, graphic, background, and grid all at once.