04/07/2026
[The Design Thinking Behind The Hong Kong Colour Archive — Chapter 1]
This project was born out of a purely selfish intent: I wanted a swatch card that could actually keep pace with how I use fountain pen inks. Traditional swatches rarely do justice to heavy applications, water washes, or the fluid, unpredictable chromatography. I needed a paper canvas substantial enough to let the ink pool, bleed, and breathe. But utility alone wasn’t enough. I knew from the onset that if I was going to build this archive from scratch, I would anchor it deeply in the visual soul of Hong Kong, weaving cultural memory into every physical detail.
The first major design challenge lay in translating architectural nostalgia onto paper. I chose to feature the iconic begonia window grille pattern—a vintage motif once ubiquitous in old Hong Kong homes. In its original context, the pattern lives in the interplay of light and textured glass. Replicating that essence on an opaque paper surface required a deliberate shift in design thinking.
Because paper is inherently non-transparent, I couldn’t rely on backlighting to create depth. Instead, the challenge became finding a printing technique—perhaps through tactile letterpress impression, subtle blind debossing, or precise line-weight calibration—that honors the structural geometry of the grilles without flattening their organic charm. The goal isn’t just to print a pattern, but to evoke the memory of looking through those vintage windows, using the depth of the paper itself to replace the transparency of glass.
The Hong Kong Colour Archive, an original design by LuFish Co. , printed by Aoto Letterpress 歐圖印刷 available at 嘴郁郁工作室 Mouthyukyuk Studio and JOURNALIZE 文簿具社
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