www.buech-gestalten.org

Büch-Gestalten is a practice-based research project that investigates how schoolbooks can be designed as open, diverse, and hybrid learning environments. The project examines how analog and digital formats of textual education can be meaningfully combined in basic schools — not as parallel systems, but as interconnected pedagogical practices. Rather than focusing on surface design alone, the research addresses the structural, social, and cultural dimensions of educational media. It explores how design systems, typographic structures, content models, and production processes shape who is addressed, who is represented, and who is able to participate in learning.

Under www.buech-gestalten.org, we developed an online platform that functions as both a design system and a collaborative research environment. The platform enables students and teachers to design, adapt, and produce their own school materials — including small print runs — fostering authorship, agency, and diversity-sensitive approaches to educational content. The project brings together research, design practice, and pedagogy, positioning graphic design as an active intervention into educational infrastructures rather than a neutral interface.