Not so fast

Zhu's works

One and One Man

Written by a friend of Zhu Yingchun's, a former migration worker who likes to share his bitter-sweet past, it is a book about memories, designed like a century-old collection. The yellowed pages had "obviously" lost their original colors. Zhu created hints of a frequently handled volume - with a lock of hair, a fingerprint or a grease mark occasionally found as one peruses the pages. To entice readers into the stories, the designer also added, based on the content, images of nostalgic objects such as a folded receipt or a page of a menu. These images look so real that one is tempted to try to scratch off a strand of hair, for example, that appears on a page.

Candies of Vigor

Primarily a collection of food reviews by renowned food critic Shu Qiao, the book is defined by Zhu as a volume of softness and warmth. He used foam rubber as the book cover to give readers that sensual essence. The colors of the cover and characters inside are an eye-catching green. The book title consists of little lovely bubble-like candies.

The Bible

Zhu was commissioned by the Amity Foundation to design a cover for the sacred book. He wanted it to be simple, yet conveying a profound power. It is wrapped in solemn black velvet, reflecting Zhu's inspiration from the black robes ancient priests wore. In the middle of the cover is a cross with mirror surface, through which Zhu explained people check up themselves before they open the book.

Design Poetry

Zhu's second self-created book, it features 10 of his own poems. He believes the pictographic nature of characters is as revealing as their meaning, so he uses the shape and structure of characters as well as the layout of pages to convey what a poem is supposed to mean. It is seen as both experimentalism as well as tribute to the pictographic origin of written language.