005 → To:
Book DesignLonglisted ABDA Best Student Book 2022To: is a typographic experiment disguised as a publication (physically printed and published to test as an actual experimental artefact) — a collective essay in form and thought. Conceived as an exploration into the poetics of typesetting, it brings together a group of designer-peers who each write, design, and reflect upon the act of typesetting itself. The result is a layered conversation where structure and intuition, precision and accident, cohabit the same printed field.
The book employs a system of colour-coding to distinguish overlapping dialogues within one collective discourse — threads of thought that meander, intersect, and sometimes dissolve. These colour bands, when scanned, bleed into one another to form gradients along the spine — visual traces of both error and intent. What might first appear as a technical artefact becomes instead a meditation on touch, repetition, and the tension between the mechanical and the human.
At its core, To: also questions legibility as a condition of leisure. By interlacing small and large typefaces within a single reading experience, it tests how rhythm, scale, and visual weight influence the reader’s pace and perception. It is both a reading experiment and a visual essay — an artefact that treats typography not merely as language’s vessel, but as its most articulate conversation.《To:》 是一场伪装成出版物的文字实验（同时作为一个实验实体进行了打印制作并出版）——一场关于排版的集体思考。它由一群设计师共同发起，每个人都以文字与版面回应“排版”这一行为本身：思考、设计、再反思。于是，书籍成为一个层层叠叠的语境场，在其中，结构与直觉、精准与偶然并置共生。
书中采用了颜色编码的系统，以区分同一场对话中不断交织的思绪——那些在群体交流中彼此穿插、分歧又重叠的文本线索。当这些颜色在扫描中被拉伸成书脊上的渐变时，它们仿佛是一次“技术性错误”的幻影，又像是一种人为的温度在与机械完美进行微妙的抗衡。
从更深处看，《To:》亦在探问“阅读”的合法性——当大小不一的字体在同一本书中并置，阅读的节奏与感知将如何被重新塑造？这不仅是一场排版实验，更是一篇视觉论文：它让排版不再只是语言的容器，而成为语言自身最具表现力的对话。