The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2022–2024
None Utensil catalog turns its cover into a blank molded tile for Ma Huiyuan's Gifu show
The catalog for Ma Huiyuan's 2022 porcelain show has a cover of molded white cardboard that reads as an empty tile — the same square then grids every page.
Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House
What it had to solve
In November 2022 the Museum of Modern Ceramics in Gifu, Japan hosted Chinese artist Ma Huiyuan's porcelain exhibition, and Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House produced the accompanying book. The catalog had to bring white, glossy, square ceramic works into print without flattening them into pictures.
How it works
In November 2022 the Museum of Modern Ceramics in Gifu, Japan opened Chinese artist Ma Huiyuan's porcelain exhibition, and Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House produced the book that accompanied it. Ma's 'Porcelain' series works in white, glossy, square ceramic tiles, so the catalog's design problem was how to echo a material object in print.
The answer was to make the book itself a tile. The cover is empty — no title, no image — and the thick white cardboard is molded into a raised square, so the cover reads as one of the artist's glossy ceramic pieces. The blankness lets the material make the statement.
The same square then becomes the book's structural motif: it is repeated as the grid system that orders text and illustrations on every spread. The D&AD awards archive preserves the work in its Book Design category, and the archive records no print-run figures, so the documented result is the object itself.
Why it lands
- The cover is not a picture of a tile: molded cardboard physically reads as a raised, glossy white ceramic square, so the book and the artwork share material language.
- Leaving the cover blank withholds title and image, forcing readers to meet the object itself — the same discipline as the minimal ceramic surfaces it echoes.
- Reusing the square as the layout grid carries the concept through the whole book, not just the cover, so tile, typography and illustrations speak one language.
- The idea scales from object to system: one tile is the cover, repeated tiles order every page — a single formal decision that runs the entire publication.
What it did
The cover lets readers meet the ceramic with their hands before they turn a single page, and one motif carries the whole book. The D&AD awards archive preserves the work under Book Design; the archive records no print-run figures, so the documented result is the object itself.
What you can take
When the artwork is a material, make the carrier behave like that material: a cover molded as a blank tile introduces the work before a word is read, and one motif can drive both cover and grid.
Since then
The catalog was designed for the exhibition that opened in Gifu in November 2022 and later entered D&AD's awards archive under Book Design. The archive records no print-run or sales data, so the case stands on the design itself: a blank, molded cover that lets a book embody the ceramic work it documents.
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