Shelfies #49: Katee Hui

My bookshelf is essentially a direct reflection of my life—part strategy studio, part football club, part late-night zine fair. It’s stacked with books on brand, design, and sustainability, sitting alongside well-worn reads on parenthood, tactical football coaching tips and photography books of the beautiful game.

What I treasure most are the one-offs: handmade books, zines, and self-published gems by friends and collaborators. There’s something deeply inspiring about the creativity it takes to make a physical book—how it becomes a object of care, craft, and expression. Favourites include Manon by the ever-talented Jenny Simmons and the first edition of Slowe Club by Ro Jackson. They're projects that feel less like publications and more like invitations into someone’s world.

One section of my bookshelf is dedicated to Pentagram Papers—a 50-year tradition of publishing by the design agency where I was once an Associate Partner. Each edition is a small, curious book exploring an unexpected topic, often overlooked or undercelebrated. They’re beautifully designed, quietly radical, and unlike anything else in branding or design culture. I love them not just for their content, but for what they represent: a commitment to curiosity, to storytelling, and to making space for the strange and wonderful in print.

Progress Press lives on my shelf too—a passion project turned small publisher I co-founded to help first-time writers bring their stories into the world. It’s a response to my deep love of print and the belief that some voices just need the right platform, not permission. We publish limited-run books, often handmade or designed with care, giving form to the kind of work that might not find a home in traditional publishing. It’s lo-fi, heartfelt, and all about progress over polish—books as acts of bravery, honesty, and connection.

You will also find the TV remote hidden in the bookshelf, far away from a toddler's reach. And my "maneki-neko" lucky cat. 

Katee Hui MBE is a strategist and the founder of Hackney Laces, a community club that creates space for girls and women in football. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Design Council Expert, she lives in Toronto, where she runs The Strategy Department—a studio focused on brand transformation—and Progress Press, an independent publisher amplifying first-time authors and untold stories. Her hobbies include long-distance running, cold plunges in Lake Ontario, and chasing after her creatures – a toddler and a miniature dachshund. 

Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.
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