Anti-Environments: On the Exploration of Unconventional Tools through Friction and Norm-Bending

An experimental project created entirely in Google Sheets to explore new, accessible forms of publication.

In Anti-Environments, designer-artist Luis Adrian Borchardt explores how misusing digital tools and alternative design processes can unearth new creative potential and lead to greater autonomy and experimental practice with digital media. This highly unconventional companion on design tools challenges established traditions and methods through friction. Borchardt deliberately examines fields of tension and software limitations to break with conventional ways of use and to open unexplored avenues for creativity. He advocates for digital media being understood as dynamic formative systems to be made use of and to be repurposed, rather than as linear processes.

Borchardt’s visionary book is itself such an “anti-environment,” produced entirely in Google Sheets and avoiding conventional design programs. In this way, he demonstrates an alternative hybrid publishing approach, allowing readers to print a work from the internet and bind the volume themselves.

Borchardt is a trailblazer for a more open, democratic concept of disseminating knowledge and making it accessible.

Luis Adrian Borchardt is a Berlin-based graphic designer and artist.