The Prelude Exhibition of The First Shanghai Graphic Design Biennale – TopoPoster: International Poster Design Exhibition, after six months (June – December, 2025) of planning and preparation, was successfully held from December 13 to December 22, 2025. As one of the larger-scale exhibitions in recent years featuring an international selection of works in China, it showcased over 300 representative poster designs from 153 influential contemporary designers and studios active in the forefront of the field across 28 countries.

VIZA VISUALIZATION

Misztótfalusi Kis Miklós (1650–1702) was a pioneering Hungarian printer and letter cutter. His best-known typeface was previously wrongly attributed to Anton Janson.

This poster is depicting one fish soup recipe (made from the fish called “viza”). This recipe is from Misztótfalusi’s cookbook (the first printed Hungarian cookbook from 1695) called “Cookery booklet”.

This fish has a strange Hungarian name “viza”, strange because it sounds almost identical as the Hungarian word for water “víz”. That is the source of another linguistic curiosity: the fish soup recipe’s name is almost like water in water (in old Hungarian dialect).

The poster’s concept was based on this linguistic ambiguity around the water and this fish’s name, and the fact that this fish (because of the general deterioration of river water quality in Europe) has already disappeared from the Hungarian rivers. The poster is based on the typographic play of the letters emerging (and disappearing) from the watery background.

Simon Peter Bence Studio

Péter Bence
SIMON

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