The archive · Design & Visual · Strategic decision · 2022
Toppan's Masquerader turns exhibition posters into double-faced 3D masks
Toppan's Masquerader poster series becomes 3D masks with a different facial expression on each side, carrying printed expression off the flat page.
Toppan
What it had to solve
Masquerader is a series of posters produced for Graphic Trial, an exhibition organised by the Japanese printing company Toppan to explore the possibilities of printed expression. The work had to show what print could do beyond reproducing an image on paper.
How it works
Masquerader is a series of posters produced for Graphic Trial, an exhibition organised by the Japanese printing company Toppan to explore the possibilities of printed expression. The exhibition's premise is that print can do far more than put ink on paper, and each work had to act on that premise.
Rather than remain two-dimensional images, the posters were transformed into an entirely new 3D object: masks. Each mask shows a different facial expression on its front and its back, so the printed piece changes what it says depending on how it is held, turned or worn.
The work entered the D&AD awards archive under graphic design, where it is documented as an example of print leaving the page. The poster does not illustrate the exhibition's question about printed expression — it is the answer made physical.
Why it lands
- Making the poster itself the exhibit proves Toppan's point: printed expression can produce objects, not only images.
- Two expressions on one mask double the range of a single printed piece, letting one object say two different things.
- The mask demonstrates Toppan's craft through the artefact itself, rather than through any claim in a brochure.
- Because the piece only completes its meaning when a viewer turns or wears it, the audience finishes the idea.
What it did
The work entered the D&AD awards archive under graphic design, standing there as a documented example of printed expression pushed into three dimensions rather than left on the page.
What you can take
Let the demonstration be the product: when the question is what print can do, hand people a printed object that behaves like nothing a flat page can, and the craft proves itself.
Since then
Masquerader was produced for Toppan's Graphic Trial, the printing company's exhibition series exploring the possibilities of printed expression, and the work was filed in the D&AD awards archive under graphic design. There it documents a simple move: a poster redesigned as a 3D mask whose two sides carry different expressions, so the printed object changes character in the viewer's hands.
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