Unbalanced and Incomplete Tour of Dutch Design

• book
• 2008
• offset lithograph, adhesive bound
• 153 x 210 mm, 336 pp

This book is an assemblage of memoirs from our residency in the Netherlands, notes from a later trip to the country, and reflections on the Dutch design culture from the outsiders’ views. The front cover features an image from ­Barbara Visser’s series A Day in Holland / Holland in a Day (2001), for which the Dutch artist took photographs of Western models – conspicuously disguised as Asians – in the Dutch-themed miniature town Huis ten Bosch in Nagasaki, Japan (again, some people thought they were us).

Opening the book, there is a reproduction of a Dutch postage stamp showing the same work. Designed by the Werkplaats Typografie, a graduate school in Arnhem and one of the subjects of this book, the stamp also features a typeface we made based on the work of the legendary Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel.

A series of informal travel pictures is included, and these pictures are displayed upside-down in between articles, providing realistic views that contrast with the more considered images and ideas found in other parts of the book.

• Project type:
• publication

• Authors:
• Choi Sung Min and Choi Sulki

• Commissioner:
• Ahn Graphics

• Exhibitions:
• Group Theory (DDP, Seoul, 2021–22)
• Sulki & Min: Clarifying & Obscuring (Transtage, Hangzhou, 2024)