To See in White: an art book paints artifacts' missing parts

Artist and curator He Ming painted 60 ink works of damaged museum artifacts, including Sanxingdui pieces, where white plaster restoration marks what is missing. Publisher Jiangsu Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing asked Nanjing designer Zhao Qing (Hanqingtang Design) to turn that meditation on absence into a printed object, not a flat picture book.

Make the missing parts the subject: ink-drawn relics hide inside an all-white book's folded pages, so plaster gaps are literally painted white — absence becomes artwork.

From cover to inner pages the book is white throughout, echoing the plaster; dark-ink artifact bodies are hidden inside accordion-folded paper, with the outside of each fold screen-printed white and layered ink inside printed by a specialized process, in thread-bound folds with uncut top edges.

The book took D&AD 2026's sole Yellow Pencil in Graphic Design (catalogues) plus a Graphite in Book Design, a One Show 2026 Silver Pencil, GDC 2025 Gold and a 2025 'Most Beautiful Books' of China award.

To See in White (《明白》) collects 60 ink paintings by artist and curator He Ming of damaged artifacts in museums — including Sanxingdui pieces — where the white plaster used in restoration is the visible record of what is missing. Publishing house Jiangsu Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing and Nanjing design studio Hanqingtang Design (瀚清堂), led by Zhao Qing, were asked to make a catalogue that could carry He Ming's meditation on presence and absence, object and void.

The design answered with white itself. From cover to inner pages the book is white throughout, echoing the white plaster on the relics; the dark-ink bodies of the artifacts are hidden inside folded paper, while the outside of each fold is screen-printed white and the layered ink inside is printed with a specialized color process. Light and dark lines across the binding play out the coexistence of black and white elements, all in a restrained visual language.

Jury accounts describe the book as going beyond a simple record of the paintings: every detail, from paper choice to concept-driven binding to minimal design, was deliberate, and holding the physical book makes its existence as an 'object' clear. The concept of 'painting white with white' turned the restoration plaster — a sign of damage and absence — into the book's aesthetic starting point.

Designing the book as an all-white object makes absence tangible: the missing plaster is not illustrated but performed by the paper itself.

Hiding the ink paintings inside folded, uncut pages turns reading into an act of unfolding and discovery.

Craft choices — paper selection, screen-printed white, layered ink printing, accordion folds — let the object stand as a work in its own right.

Rooting every production detail in the artist's theme of existence, absence and completeness gave juries a coherent concept behind the craft.

When the theme is absence, let the physical object carry it: white paper, hidden images and a folded reading experience turned a catalogue into the artwork itself.

After winning GDC 2025 Gold and China's 'Most Beautiful Books' in 2025, the title collected D&AD 2026's only Yellow Pencil in Graphic Design — for catalogues, brochures and annual reports — alongside a Graphite Pencil in Book Design for art and design, plus a Silver Pencil at The One Show 2026. The publisher Jiangsu Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing made the win part of its D&AD 2026 story: four of its books earned six Pencils, with To See in White as the only Yellow Pencil among them.