In the field of Speculative Design, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. This research investigates the role of illustration as a tool for speculative world-building not just through narrative, but through infrastructural systems: manuals, field guides, diagrams, maps, taxonomies, and other pseudo-functional visual formats that scaffold speculative realities. Rather than illustrating moments within a story, these works visualize the underlying logic, ecosystems, and epistemologies of imagined worlds, inviting audiences to engage with the framework of the unreal.

This project explores a diverse range of examples, ranging from classic references such as Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus and Wayne Barlowe’s Expedition, to role-playing game bestiaries and atlases, and contemporary artist-led works, as well as student projects, that take the form of faux prototypes or bureaucratic artifacts. These illustrated systems are often framed with the aesthetics of objectivity, emulating scientific illustration, cartography, or instruction, but subvert their rational veneer to create worlds that feel both tangible and unknowable.

In addition to a critical survey of existing practices, the research includes the development and user-outcomes of an experimental visual interface that enables participants to create their own speculative illustrated systems inviting them to contribute to an evolving archive of fictional infrastructures. This participatory component serves both as a research tool and a pedagogical experiment, exploring how illustrators think through systems, design internal logics, and build meaning through form.

Rather than arguing a single thesis, this research is structured as an inquiry: How can illustration operate as a method of speculative reasoning? What does it mean to draw a world into being through systems and symbols instead of characters or scenes? And how might engaging with unreality in this way enrich illustration education and practice?