To See in White: an art book paints artifacts' missing parts — D&AD 2026 Yellow Pencil

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.