XXL Studio - Xiaoxiang Liu

“The most important thing in my design process is the contemporaneity of the design”

“XXL Studio additionally expand our understanding of how books are experienced beyond the Western paradigm. The way the books are handled and treated can provide us with a different set of design rules that can push Western design to its limits and force us to fundamentally challenge our perceptions of graphic design as to why we make our design decisions and for whose benefit?”

XXl Studio is a graphic design studio founded by designer Xiaoxiang Liu; it focuses on editorial and publication based projects and now has 2 offices, one in Beijing and one in New York. Xiaoxiang Liu has been the recipient of an honorary award for best book design in 2010, 2012 and 2014. In China book binding is held in very high esteem which is very evident when looking at the incredibly bespoke and experimental publications the studio has produced:

‘In all the Voices, I only Listen to You’ is a  project which invites pop stars to read well-known poems in an attempt to provide another way of reading. The book is also accompanied by a CD. The production quality of this book is really high, everything from wallet it arrives in, the CD, the embossed matt sleeve of the book and the warm Pantone green spot colour which strengthens the continuity of this set of objects as one single publication.

Climate is a book in which Xiaoxiang deconstructs the Chinese character for the English word ‘climate’ using different textures for each part of the character’s anatomy. The designer prescribes natural colours to separate typographic elements such as a “silver that symbolises PM2.5, a key manmade pollutant causing smog. Another blue colour represents the clean, unpolluted sky, and the white background of the book suggests an aspiration for a purer living environment.”

- This attention to detail and high regard for each element of the design , for example using different colour hues for different effects, is pretty incredible. What’s more is that it is highly rooted in research, making it highly applicable and very topical.