Images are at the core of contemporary communication. No message, no design und no research is without images. We find ourselves in the age of images, but the required culture of designing is in arrears. The SPACE FOR VISUAL RESEARCH proposes a teaching, a laboratory and a manual. It is aiming for abstract images that are independent of visual references, and emerge from a free authorship of the designer. Markus Weisbeck, who founded the SPACE FOR VISUAL RESEARCH together with Mathias Schmitt and Michael Ott in 2013 at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, introduces the project’s programme in an interview with Alex Marashian: »It’s possible that a method for the systematic teaching of form via abstraction could be developed. If you do graphic design with abstract images, you are more focused on composition and less distracted by questions of meaning.« The publication of the same name as lab log is able to assert its claim by demonstrating different modes of abstraction in 13 image series by 16 designers, who experimented with optical, physical, chemical a nd digital tools. The compositions push the limits of depiction, iconicity and exemplariness. Published by Spector Books with two artistic interventions by Jason Dodge and E. Roon Kang and an original print by Enno Pötschke. © All Images

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