Image RIP: After Printing, Work & Planet Earth

Centered around New York graphic designer Geoff Han’s investigation into the printer Artron Shenzhen, the book speculates on design, production, work, and the environment in the precarious, post-industrial economy. The book gathers essays by Danielle Aubert, David Bennewith, Geoff Han, Ming Lin, Shanzhai Lyric, David Reinfurt, Mindy Seu, and Dena Yago, as well as images by Ann Woo. In his printing experiments at Artron Shenzhen—including unconventional production techniques and hand collation—Han explores the limits of production in a supply-chain factory that normally produces books for Tencent, Alibaba, Apple, Walmart and Disney, among others. The design of Image RIP follows Han’s rigorous approach, where the entire publication, including images, are created from text. Throughout the book this text scales, moving from large letterforms consuming entire pages to small text. As a result, the images generated from this type, known as calligrams, become clearer, with details emerging as letterforms become smaller. Image RIP reflects a consistent theme in Han’s practice of the manipulation of image reproduction, printing, production, code and other techniques to affect the process of viewing and reading.