Peng-Hsiang Kao

jury statement

★
Taiwan /// Taiwan
★

The cover’s visual and tactile qualities immediately invite engagement with the book’s content. The open spine allows the front and back covers to unfold into a single continuous image illustrating the essential stages of letterpress printing – type casting, sorting, typesetting, and printing. The cover was printed using traditional letterpress techniques, making the images and text’s texture and depth stand out distinctly. A soft grey reminiscent of lead type serves as the book’s unifying visual tone.

Peng Hsiang Kao, the author, spent five years visiting every type casting and printing-plate workshop in Taiwan. During his research, he conducted interviews, documented his findings, and created hundreds of detailed drawings capturing the techniques and environments of traditional printing. The book’s texts and diagrams offer both cultural and historical context, while the illustrations meticulously trace the entire letterpress process from tools and equipment to casting, sorting, typesetting, and printing. Presented in a horizontal format, each image clearly reveals how the elements function, creating a calm, coherent visual rhythm throughout the pages.

This book is not only a documentation of the printing craft but a tribute to the preservation of a vanishing industrial culture through thoughtful design. A carefully made and beautifully illustrated encyclopaedia of letterpress printing in Taiwan. It is a publication as necessary as it is exquisite.