Ziting Hong

Ziting Hong is a visual communicator and designer based in London. Before studying MA Visual Communication at the RCA, Ziting completed her BA in Graphic and Media Design at the London College of Communication. 

Ziting is working in the fields of visual systems and creative direction. Her process-driven practice often centres on typography, which she is keen to explore as a format of communication in itself. She views typography as tool of engagement that can enhance the narrative of a project, creating designs that are both visually appealing and meaningful.

My work exploring ‘physical vs digital’ has roots in my year one studies. It sparked my interest in observing the everyday and guided me in questioning the formation, existence, and perception of materiality in the digital age. 

My interest in this subject was later consolidated by the national lockdown. Instead of physical engagements, communication was predominantly channeled through the digital medium. Since then, I stayed at home and stared at screens for most of the time. This is the first time that I felt we are experiencing a collective dematerialisation – we are gradually getting used to experiencing a subject through a screen.

There is a saying that ‘seeing is believing’, but is seeing through a screen considered ‘seeing’? I believe messages carried through a screen are filtered or even mutated when the subject moves from physical to digital forms. As such, I am keen to explore how subjects behave in both worlds and how these mutations happen. How should I act as response? Could I create an alternative existence?  

My interest in typography naturally led me to consider it as the potential agent of this project. Not to mention it is aptly associated with both the physical and digital formats. The final body of work presented here ranges from typographic experiments, employing various digital processes, to a set of typefaces, fused with the digital behaviour of the pixels and the physical behaviour of handwriting.

My process-driven practice celebrates experimentation by pushing each letterform through multiple digital processes. Every step of the experiments has inspired my next stage. Archiving every stage of the design process from initial experiments to final design iterations is key to understanding the concept behind my body of work.