Roots Zines by Xun Zuo is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Bronze A' Design Award in Print and Published Media Design Competition Category.
BronzePrint· 2025
Roots Zines
by Xun Zuo
Client: Xunzuodesign
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Print Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #172635The Design
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.
The Recognition
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.
Where to Get It
Brand Experience and Environmental Design Services
We craft visually immersive brand experiences that connect deeply with audiences. Our cross-cultural design expertise spans identity systems, spatial environments, and retail experiences. From concept to execution, we transform brands into sensorial narratives that resonate emotionally and strategically.
Contact UsInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to capturing immigrant experiences through Roots Zines' modular format and vacuum-sealed presentation is striking - could you elaborate on how this physical design choice amplifies the emotional narrative of belonging and impermanence?
In book design, the sequence and rhythm are dictated by the author. In this work, I seek to dismantle that curatorial authority in favor of a more democratized experience. By deconstructing the very structure of the book, I invite readers to define their own order and method of engagement, allowing them to interpret the narratives through their own lens. The vacuum-sealed packaging, drawing inspiration from coffee preservation, serves as a metaphor for safeguarding these stories and their endurance over time.
The research behind Roots Zines involved over 40 participants sharing their coffee shop experiences - how did these intimate conversations shape your decisions about paper selection, binding methods, and visual language for each individual zine?
The conversations with the interviewees extended far beyond the coffee itself. These dialogues unfolded organically, encompassing their aesthetics, experience, and even their social media and private stories. I asked about the preferences of materials and colors, while also guiding them to consider the symbolic meanings in the design choices.
In developing Roots Zines, you mentioned the challenge of conducting neutral, non-leading interviews - could you share how you navigated cultural sensitivities while helping storytellers express their authentic experiences with New York's coffee culture?
I conducted my inquiries in environments where participants felt most at ease. Asking questions without bias, observing, and documenting. My training in ethnographic research at Pratt Institute equipped me with the tools to approach these conversations with neutrality and sensitivity. Often, our dialogues unfolded in coffee shops chosen by the participants themselves. These familiar and reassuring settings created a sense of safety, allowing them to voice what they genuinely wished to share.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- 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.
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