The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2022
All Weaves In My Heart hands fading Fai tai band weaving to young readers as a book
Kai Ho Ng's colour-led book turns old Fai tai weavers' oral histories and a reworked traditional pattern into design that speaks to the young.
Kai Ho Ng
What it had to solve
Fai tai, the patterned bands woven by Hakka and Weitou women in old Hong Kong, belonged to an earlier generation's everyday life, and younger people no longer knew it. The task was to introduce the craft to the young rather than only record it for archives.
How it works
Fai tai, the patterned bands woven by Hakka and Weitou women in old Hong Kong, belonged to an earlier generation's everyday life. As its elderly weavers aged, both the technique and the stories behind it risked disappearing before younger generations ever met them.
All Weaves In My Heart answers that loss with a book that treats heritage as a design problem rather than a record-keeping task. It is built on oral histories in which the old weavers share the skills and stories behind the colourful Fai tai, presented with colour as the bridge: a vibrant aesthetic that closes the gap between the traditional practice and young readers.
The cover carries the idea further. A traditional Fai tai symbol is used with different interpretations, building connections between ancient and modern cultures, so the design does not stand outside the craft describing it — it re-presents the craft in the visual language of the generation the project wants to reach.
The result is a printed object designed to hand a living tradition to the young, and the work now sits in D&AD's awards archive. The archive page records no sales or readership figures, so the case transfers through its mechanism: heritage kept alive by being re-translated, not boxed in a museum case.
Why it lands
- Oral history puts the craft's last makers at the centre, so the book preserves their stories and skills rather than only images of objects.
- A colour-led, vibrant aesthetic addresses the younger generation the project needs to reach instead of framing the craft as a relic.
- Reinterpreting the traditional cover symbol gives an old pattern a modern reading, making the bridge between generations the point of the design itself.
- Because the pattern is allowed to mean something new, the book works as cultural transmission rather than documentation alone.
What it did
The craft's stories and techniques are captured in a printed object aimed at younger readers, and the work now stands in D&AD's awards archive as an example of heritage translated rather than merely archived.
What you can take
Do not preserve a dying craft in amber: translate its patterns and symbols into the visual language of the audience you need to reach, and the heritage is carried forward instead of merely exhibited.
Since then
The work remains visible as D&AD's archive record of the craft, keeping the weavers' stories and patterns findable as a documented example. The archive page records no circulation or sales figures, so the case transfers through its mechanism rather than its numbers: a heritage subject designed in the aesthetic of the audience it needed to reach.
Sources
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