Flexible Toolkit Systems Workshop with Will Mower
Transform fixed rules into a creative playground for image-making. In this workshop with artist and designer Will Mower, you’ll build your own visual system that acts as a flexible toolkit for unexpected, structured experimentation. By using Adobe Illustrator to manipulate simple graphic elements and changing constraints, you’ll discover how minor tweaks yield entirely new visual languages. You’ll walk away with a personal modular system and a unique collection of experimental works.
Upcoming workshop dates
Choose the session that fits your schedule. Live & online. We believe in the power of real-time collaboration, so no recordings—just hands-on learning. Limit: Strictly limited to 15 participants to ensure individual mentoring.
If you have any questions about the course, feel free to email us at franziska@schoolofsystems.org.
Next Workshop:
Fri, 23 & Sat, 24 October 2026
14:00-17:00 CEST
Location: Live online, Google Meet
Please note: This workshop will not be recorded.
Language: English
Price: 250€ + VAT
About the workshop:
This workshop explores how visual systems can be developed as flexible tool-kits for generating images through play, constraint and iteration. Participants will build and work with modular sets of visual components and rules that allow images to emerge through structured experimentation.
Through a series of guided exercises, participants will reconstruct and reinterpret images using simple graphic elements, introduce changing rules and see how different outcomes emerge from the same starting point. The focus is on how small changes in rules and structure can lead to unexpected visual results.
The workshop encourages an open and experimental approach to making, where systems are built, tested and developed through use. By the end, participants will have developed their own visual system for making images, along with a series of experimental works created using it.
Audience:
Designers, illustrators and creative practitioners interested in systems-based thinking and generative approaches to image-making. The workshop is suitable for early-to-mid career levels, as well as students with some basic experience in visual or graphic practice.
The workshop will use Adobe Illustrator as the primary tool for constructing and testing visual systems. Participants should be comfortable working in a digital environment, but no advanced technical skills are required – curiosity and an interest in experimentation and collaboration are more important than software mastery.
What will participants take home:
- A practical understanding of how visual systems can function as generative tool-kits for image-making.
- Experience working with constraint, iteration and rule-based systems
- A personal modular system for creating images through structured experimentation
- A set of exploratory visual outcomes developed through their system
- Methods for developing illustration as an open, adaptable visual language
About Will:
Will Mower is an artist, designer and educator exploring graphic systems through material, place, and process.
He works with a toolkit-based approach, building modular visual systems from simple geometric forms. His practice moves between improvisation and structure, using play as a method for testing how systems can generate unexpected outcomes.
Across his work he applies this approach to printmaking, physical objects and ceramics, as well as interactive and digital environments. He is interested in how graphic languages translate across mediums and how constraints can become generative tools for design.
