Wang Zhi-Hong’s work aims to highlight the “importance of text in Chinese graphic design”

Taiwanese designer Wang Zhi-Hong creates elegant book designs, and through his work he hopes to convey the “importance of text in the role of Chinese graphic design”, using it as a decorative element as well as a way to communicate information. Wang hopes to put “Chinese in harmony with other languages, and share the results with non-Chinese regions” and as a result, his work is text and type-heavy often placing different scripts next to each other to create interesting dialogues. The designer is also influenced by the late Swiss graphic designer and teacher Josef Müller-Brockmann for his strict functional criteria for design, that was often offset by dynamic compositions.

We’ve shared Wang’s work many times on the site before and his ability to take the contents of a book and condense it into pleasingly simple book designs only seems to be getting stronger. “The process of sorting information” is what the designer enjoys most on a project and the ways in which he is able to “express [his] understanding and imagination with a better form”.

Most recently, Wang has worked on The Contents of the Times, Formosa Heat, and L’abécédaire de la littérature. “Their similarities are all connected through the environment and language I live in,” says Wang. “And I really got pleasure and inspiration from the process”. With subtle colour palettes and thoughtful graphics to accompany refined typography, these elements come together to form a sophisticated aesthetic that’s become Wang’s signature.