Zheqi Cao is a graphic designer and visual communication designer from China, now based in London.
Zheqi's main avenues of exploration are text, typography, print and publishing, with a focus on experimental materials. He uses observations of everyday life as a way to constantly explore the balance between human beings and work.
‘This is the only way we can go.’
‘Leave us a small pathway, we want to walk freely too.’
‘I walked along the street with a blind man's cane, and my family told me that it was not dangerous as long as I walked down the blind lane. But when I went out there I realised that the blind walkway seemed more dangerous.’
‘If you take a blind lane seriously, you will definitely get hurt on a trip out there.’
‘It's called a blind lane, but it's a dangerous one, and I'm afraid to walk it!’
‘If blind lanes don't allow us to 'travel alone' safely and conveniently, then they don't mean much.’
‘The blind lane is our eyes and every time we go out, our world is only the blind lane and if it too was full of obstacles and no longer safe, we would be more afraid to go out.’
‘I wish the blind lane could be free of obstacles, but I know that's not possible.’
There are tens of millions of blind people in China, but there are no blind people on China's blind lanes. Over the past twenty or thirty years, China has undertaken large-scale construction of blind lanes in various cities, but which of the current blind lanes are actually used by blind people? It can be said that very few are. These issues affect the rights of the blind.
Through my work, I hope to shed light on the situation in China, and also to draw attention to these issues, so that blind people can use them again and the visually impaired can travel safely. I use the publication as a way to create a connection between people and the blind before they are blind. Combining the way blind people read, so that people can experience the subject of the book aurally, tactilely and visually. To feel like a blind person and read like a blind person.
