Reconsidering Folding as a Method of Reading
My Unit 2 enquiry explores how folding and unfolding can shape the way printed information is encountered, particularly through the translation of exhibition experiences into publications. My studio practice has developed from experimenting with physical paper structures towards investigating how folds might delay, conceal, reveal and reorganise information. However, I have also become concerned that my attempt to establish a conceptual framework around folding may have restricted the open-ended nature of my enquiry.
To critically situate and advance my practice, I engaged in dialogues with graphic designer and researcher Paul Bailey, book designer Zhao Qing, and artist and curator Wang Yiquan. Their differing perspectives helped me reconsider folding not as a self-contained concept, but as a method whose value depends on content, medium, context and the reader’s experience.
From physical folding to temporal reading
During my dialogue with Paul Bailey, I shared my experimental publication based on a Giacometti exhibition. Paul was particularly interested in the movement between literal folding and unfolding as a way of thinking, interpreting and publishing. He suggested that my task was not to construct an overarching theory of folding, but to consider how it might invite particular ways of reading information.
He identified an important concern in my attempt to translate an exhibition into a booklet: the movement from a spatial encounter with artworks and architecture into a different temporal experience organised through printed matter. This encouraged me to think more carefully about the relationship between linear and nonlinear reading, and about how a publication can construct its own sequence rather than simply reproduce an exhibition’s spatial arrangement.
Paul also introduced the idea of queer temporality as one possible perspective on non-normative structures of time. I understand this as an invitation to question assumptions about linear progression, rather than as a theoretical position that my project has already established.
Among the artistic references Paul introduced, An Onghena’s practice was particularly relevant to my enquiry. In Performance for the Book (2017), an enlarged sheet of paper is manipulated through bodily actions, gradually transforming into a sculptural form. Paper becomes an active participant in the performance rather than a passive surface for information. The project also reveals how the material’s physical properties and limitations influence the actions that can be performed.
Onghena’s collaborative publication werkboek, developed with Jivan van der Ende, further explores reading as a performative process involving the book and its readers. These works encouraged me to consider the physical demands of folding: how paper weight, scale, resistance and structure might influence the reader’s movements.
While Onghena investigates the possibilities of paper and the book itself, my enquiry seeks to understand how such physical interactions might transform the reading of specific exhibition material. This distinction is important: bodily participation should not be introduced merely as an interactive feature, but investigated for its potential to shape how information is encountered and understood.
This dialogue shifted my attention from defining what folding means to asking what it enables a reader to do.
Material decisions as editorial decisions
My conversation with Zhao Qing grounded these questions in the practical conditions of book design. Rather than identifying content, structure, material or reading rhythm as a universal starting point, he emphasised the importance of finding a distinctive design proposition that remains closely connected to a publication’s content.
Zhao described the book as a constructed spatial body, shaped through typography, paper, printing, binding and editorial organisation. Through an example of a publication involving botanical illustrations, he demonstrated how preliminary drawings, finished images, textual material and different paper stocks could be organised into primary and secondary layers of reading. The structure did not simply contain pre-existing information; it also informed how the material was subsequently edited and developed.
This helped me recognise that the relationship between form and content is reciprocal. Folding should not necessarily be applied after the information has been finalised. Instead, the possibilities and limitations of a structure might influence which information is included, how it is classified and how different elements relate to one another.
However, Zhao also questioned excessive folding. From his experience of producing books intended for wider circulation, complicated paper structures can become difficult to read or resemble craft objects rather than functional publications. He emphasised making physical dummies, repeatedly testing and adjusting them, and knowing when to reduce a design.
Following our conversation, I examined 片方：人间序列帧, a book by the designer Zhao referred to as “Xiao Ma Ge”. Its fragmented and abstract folding structure provided a compelling example of how text can be reorganised through the material form of a book. I was particularly interested in the way its structure creates new relationships between textual fragments, making the act of unfolding part of the encounter with the work.
At the same time, my reading of the book raised a critical question. While its intricate structure offers a distinctive material and aesthetic experience, I found that it could also interrupt the accessibility and continuity of information. This does not diminish its value as an experimental book or crafted object, but highlights the importance of defining the intended reading experience.
For my own enquiry, the challenge is therefore not to produce increasingly elaborate folds, but to understand when physical complexity contributes to reading and when it becomes an obstacle.
Although I produced numerous folding experiments during Unit 2, I had not tested material suitability and the reader’s experience with sufficient rigour. Following Zhao’s comments on my publication, I intend to investigate paper weight, opacity, scale and binding more systematically.
Curating complexity and reader participation
My dialogue with Wang Yiquan introduced another perspective. When I asked how he translated complex subjects into accessible spatial experiences, he questioned the premise that complexity should always be simplified. He argued that simplifying a subject can remove information essential to understanding it. Instead, the designer or curator needs to consider what can be omitted, what must remain, and whether additional layers might encourage further interpretation.
This complicated my understanding of clarity. I had previously treated reducing conceptual layers as a necessary response to feedback on my enquiry. Wang’s response helped me distinguish between unnecessary complication and complexity that belongs to the subject itself. A fold could potentially preserve information without presenting everything simultaneously, allowing readers to encounter further layers through their own actions. Yet concealment alone does not guarantee that information will be discovered or understood.
Wang also described exhibition texts, labels, guides and publications as integral elements of curatorial structure rather than merely explanatory supplements. When discussing the translation of exhibitions into books, he favoured using the publication’s own material and sequential language instead of attempting to simulate a three-dimensional space. This connected directly with Paul’s discussion of spatial and temporal translation.
When I presented folding in terms of information hierarchy, viewing rhythm and navigation, Wang highlighted an aspect I had given less attention to: audience participation. Unlike a fixed image, a folded publication asks its reader to physically manipulate an object. He also reminded me that editorial and spatial decisions involve collaboration between designers, writers, editors and other participants.
These observations encourage me to consider not only how information is structured, but also how the reader participates in encountering and reorganising it.
Negotiating the different positions
The three dialogues did not produce a single design prescription. Paul encouraged exploratory approaches to reading and temporality; Zhao emphasised readability, material suitability and production; Wang questioned whether complexity needs to be reduced at all.
Their perspectives reveal a tension between openness and structure. A publication can invite nonlinear reading while still guiding its reader through a carefully designed sequence. It can preserve complexity without becoming unnecessarily difficult to use. It can offer physical participation without necessarily granting complete freedom.
Onghena’s work and Figure: Human Sequence Frame further sharpened this tension for me. Both demonstrate the expressive possibilities of physical paper structures, yet they also encourage me to distinguish between participation as an artistic experience and participation as a method of reading information.
I therefore do not see these conversations as validating a predetermined conclusion about folding. Instead, they have helped me identify more precise questions: What should be immediately accessible, and what might be delayed? When does unfolding deepen understanding, and when does it interrupt reading? How might a reader’s physical actions influence the relationships they discover between different pieces of information?
Advancing my enquiry
My next stage will focus on nonlinear reading, bodily participation and meaning-making through physical folding.
I want to explore how readers can establish relationships between exhibition materials through unfolding, searching and returning. Rather than reproducing an exhibition’s original spatial sequence, I intend to develop an experimental post-exhibition publication in which artworks, images, captions and viewing records can be encountered and reconsidered through the structure of the pages.
Using a consistent body of exhibition material, I will compare different folding structures, paper weights, opacities, scales and typographic treatments. Physical dummies and reader observations will help me examine how people navigate, unfold, revisit or overlook different layers, and whether these actions change the relationships they recognise.
I also want to distinguish between the functionality of an exhibition guide and the possibilities of an independently edited post-exhibition publication. The latter may allow more open-ended, exploratory reading, but its complexity still needs to be examined in relation to the reader and the content.
Ultimately, these dialogues have repositioned folding and unfolding for me: not as a theory to be demonstrated, or a form to be made increasingly elaborate, but as an open design enquiry into how information, material and readers interact.
The question I now want to investigate is:
How can readers establish relationships between exhibition materials through unfolding, searching and returning?
Through further experimentation, I hope to understand how physical folding might support nonlinear reading, invite bodily participation and contribute to the generation of meaning.
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