Bronze Print · 2025
Roots Zines
by Xun Zuo
- Bronze A' Design Award 2025 in Print
- CLIENT: Xunzuodesign
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 51,137
- Verification code 2A5E62BE66 · Verify this award
Colors
About Roots Zines
This modular publication consists of zines, each crafted with a visual language reflecting the identity of storytellers. Centered around New York coffee shops, it captures how new immigrants navigate connection and belonging. The sewn and vacuum sealed format evokes impermanence and emotional tension. Through personal narratives, the project uncovers the social value of small businesses and reframes emotional design as a tool for inclusion.
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Roots Zines is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Roots Zines is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Roots Zines splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- A book of zines, each a voice, a mood, a rhythm. Designed with visualized personal styles from the storyteller, these fragments emerge from coffee shops in New York, where new immigrants seek connection in a fast moving city. Loosely sewn and vacuum sealed, the form speaks of impermanence. This modular archive becomes both vessel and invitation, mapping emotion, honoring small businesses, and asking what design can do when it listens.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 203.2 mm x 139.7 mm zine, 6 zines total, 120 pages, printed media with sewn binding, vacuum sealed in a plastic bag.
- Tags
- Zine, Book, Ethnographic Research, Branding, Customer Experience
- Production Technology
- A modular collection of zines, each using different paper stocks, printing methods, and a mix of sewn and Coptic binding. Every material choice was shaped by conversations with storytellers. Inspired by the Chinese Red Thread legend, the bindings reflect connection and distance. A business card included in the set acts as an invitation, extending the narrative and welcoming new voices into the ongoing story.
- Design Challenge
- The biggest challenge was conducting interviews with storytellers in a neutral, non leading way, helping them share their stories without guiding them toward specific narratives about their relationship with coffee and local culture. This was particularly challenging because the influence of environment, brand design, and tone on consumers, especially who are not native speakers, is often indirect.
- Research
- This research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how coffee connects foreign individuals to local communities. It aims to understand how cafe branding influences consumer decision making. Data was collected through interviews, questionnaires, and cultural probes with over 40 participants. The findings emphasize the significance of emotional connections in branding and suggest that businesses can enhance consumer engagement by focusing on emotional design in real life interactions.
- Inspiration
- Coffee branding often reflects local culture and community, as coffee shops serve as social anchors. As a former international student, I saw coffee, a global symbol, as a bridge to belonging. I visited local cafes across New York, gathering stories from outsiders and navigating connections. This project is both a storytelling platform and a reflection on how brand and experience design shape human relationships.
- Project Duration
- An ongoing project started in August 2022. The most recent update was in July 2024.
- Operation Flow
- This book, or zine collection, connects with readers through print in a tangible way. Its unique visual language tells stories while reflecting the personal style of each storyteller. The first zine introduces the inspiration of the project, followed by others sharing diverse stories, reinforcing community. The final zine guides readers on how to participate and invites them to contribute. A business card on the vacuum sealed packaging provides submission details.
