In a globalized world, where goods, people, and knowledge travel more than ever, Asian, Latin, and Arabic characters and visual cultures are increasingly appearing side by side and mixing more often. The coexistence of different visual cultures is now part of our daily lives, whether in universities, fairs, airports, or international institutions and urban districts, and it is part of many different bases of communication.

The central research questions are: How can a respectful relationship between Chinese and Western visuals, which does not involve unilateral authoritarianism be created? How is it possible to present information, structures, and designs from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds with their own system of representation, so that these systems coexist in an equitable way? How can excessive schematization, clichés, uniformity, and generalization favoring dominant Western ideas be avoided?

After finishing the first phase of our research, which focused mainly on multilingual typography, we launched the second phase, shifting our attention to the transcultural potential of graphics, diagrams, and images from China and the West. As an exemplary object of research we chose a Ming Dynasty encyclopedia of images called Sancai Tuhui (published in 1609). This oeuvre is very appropriate for our research aim, because it contains original Chinese visualizations largely without any western influence. This encyclopedia is a collection of diagrams and maps of diverse aspects of China´s traditional perception of its own empire, society, and culture. How does this images convey information, which principles of representation are used and how can this knowledge be communicated to the western public?

We now develop a distinct pictorial language that will provide a broad public access to the Sancai Tuhui and its unique body of knowledge. This pictorial language visualizes Chinese cultural concepts in order to open the European eye to as-yet unknown Chinese visual and conceptual skills. This will be done in an appropriate manner, meaning that the contents of the encyclopedia must be simplified to avoid disproportionately excessive schematization and clichés. This is a major challenge to information design. Our pictorial language enables people to convey concrete, i.e., imagerelated, knowledge in conjunction with higher-level cultural knowledge and to compare it with Western culture.

According to Nelson Goodman, who argues that even "realism is relative, determined by the system of representation standard for a given culture or person at a given time" (Goodman, N. [1976] Languages of art : an approach to a theory of symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett, p. 37) the frame of reference need to be defined. All classical Chinese graphics that represent spatial and temporal contexts are based on a similar “conceptual” scheme. This scheme is normally not visualized but always mentally present in the visual reception. In order to show how the images convey knowledge, we will demonstrate the relationship between conceptual and pictorial schemes. For this we integrate the conceptual scheme into re-drawings of the originals in order to show both levels in their relationship. Furthermore a deeper understanding of the frame of reference that is given by the media – the Sancai Tuhui and the images itself – will be offered.