A Book From The Sky

“A Book From The Sky” was designed by Xu Bing.  He produced four hand-printed books along with scrolls for both walls and ceilings, all adorned with invented pseudo-Chinese characters. Xu Bing himself lacks comprehension of any of these characters, and this artistic endeavor functions as an exploration of how language can captivate observers irrespective of its original meaning. Employing wood letterpress type and ink on paper, this installation has graced vast exhibition spaces in institutions around the world. Subsequently, Xu Bing's body of work reveals his utilization of traditional Chinese techniques to convey political and philosophical messages.

“A Book From The Sky”  designed by Xu Bing is important to the history of design because he understands that creating type and bodies of text doesn't have to be understood by the artist sometimes and can be for others. As graphic designers, we create designs for others to understand and learn something. With this wood letter printing, he made a statement and wanted the public to learn something through his art visual communication design is like that today where sometimes we won't understand topics and the content but we still want others to learn and visualize a message and be emotionally impacted by the designs.