If you’ve never stopped to consider the cultural value of a candy bar wrapper, do it now. For in that most disposable of items—and the packages of countless others we consume on a daily basis—are volumes of insight into the particulars and priorities of a society. Material, colors, shape, and lettering all contribute to our experience with a product. And though consumers’ wants and needs may vary from country to country and culture to culture, design is employed to access the same essential urges drawing people to things—be it in service of selling cigarettes or consolidating nationalism in the name of political hegemony.

In his new book, Made in North Korea: Graphics From Everyday Life in the DPRK, Nicholas Bonner presents examples of graphic ephemera from north of the DMZ, in an effort to normalize the reclusive country’s unique design heritage. Bonner, a Brit who’s been leading group tours in the DPRK since the mid 1990s, has amassed a sprawling collection of printed matter, from ticket stubs and postage stamps to wrapping paper and canned food labels.

Tinned food label (squid). (Nicholas Bonner via Phaidon)

“I was charmed and simply taken by the graphic design elements of the products there…. So I would buy Korean sweets and keep the wrappers and the hoarding eventually became several large boxes stuffed with what others might, justifiably, call junk,” Bonner writes in the book.

But there’s a catch: in North Korea, all business is state run. As opposed to packaging elsewhere, which necessarily doubles as advertisement, consumer products in the DPRK ostensibly have no competition. Labels, then, are designed more as a reference to what’s inside, using simple illustrations and bold color palettes to convey messages to buyers. Of course, politics are visible too, in flairs of patriotism reiterating DPRK’s military grandeur, and allusions to the historical underpinnings of cultural identity.