Award-winning graphic and type designer Jie Jian presents Touch, a minimalist yet deeply affecting exploration of human interaction, language, and power. This book, stark in its execution yet profound in its impact, isolates a single word—touch—from a series of text message exchanges between Jian and her friend Xinhe. The result is an unfiltered record of bodily experience, shifting between moments of comfort and violation, intimacy and intrusion.
Typography as a Reflection of Bodily Reality
Designed with an embossed cover, Touch invites both visual and tactile engagement, reinforcing its thematic core. Within its pages, seemingly mundane interactions—petting a cat, a passing embrace—exist alongside unsettling accounts of unwanted touch in public and professional spaces. Jian presents each instance without hierarchy, confronting readers with the fluid, often uneasy ways in which physical contact permeates daily life.
Rather than categorizing these moments, Touch allows them to unfold with raw immediacy. The rhythm of repetition mirrors the unpredictability of human interaction—how the same word can carry warmth, neutrality, or harm, depending on its context. The absence of extraneous commentary shifts the focus onto language itself, urging readers to consider how power, agency, and vulnerability are embedded within everyday speech.
Expanding the Boundaries of Language and Design
Jian’s practice consistently challenges the intersections of typography, storytelling, and social critique. Touch continues this inquiry, using a single word as a framework to explore the weight of language in shaping personal and collective experiences. By distilling these conversations to their core, Jian exposes the emotional resonance hidden within the everyday, revealing how words—much like the body—can both shield and expose, empower and disarm.
A Continued Exploration of Narrative and Form
Jie Jian’s work has been internationally recognized by the Tokyo Type Directors Club and the Indigo Design Awards, among others. Fluent in Mandarin, English, and Japanese, she integrates personal and cultural narratives through typography, bookmaking, and immersive media. Her previous projects, such as Sinful Magical Girls—which reclaims narratives of shame and identity through type—demonstrate her commitment to using design as a tool for reflection and disruption.
With Touch, Jian furthers her investigation into the materiality of language. The embossed cover itself becomes an extension of the book’s message—an object that demands to be felt, even as its contents interrogate the nature of touch itself.
Experience Touch
Jian’s work continues to redefine the role of design in shaping discourse around language, memory, and power. Touch is a quiet yet urgent meditation on what it means to experience, to be experienced, and to navigate a world where the body is both seen and felt, often in ways beyond its control.
