The Making of M+

• book
• 2021
• offset lithograph, sewn in sections and adhesive bound
• 150 x 200 mm, 720 pp

M+ is Hong Kong’s contemporary art museum opened in November 2021. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the building is quickly becoming a landmark in the West Kowloon district. But it is not just a physical monument: long before the foundation was laid, it started engaging with local and international communities through various programs and exhibitions.

The Making of M+ visually chronicles the museum’s thirty-year prehistory. It was originally planned as a 200-page book with a few essays and images – a rather typical publication to coincide with the launch of an art museum. Instead, we proposed a 720-page tome to tell the story, cover to cover, with images pulled from the museum’s already wealthy archive.

From the formal photographs of artworks to casual snapshots of staff members, from neat gallery views to messy construction scenes, the rich and diverse sequence of images are penetrated by a line of text collage that pieces together quotations from various sources including official documents, press snippets, team mantras, architects’ statements, artists’ comments, and docents’ recollections. A polyphonic publication with plural perspectives and voices, The Making of M+ reflects the spirit of a new museum with an unprecedented ambition.

• Project type:
• publication

• Editor:
• H. G. Masters

• Typefaces:
• Atlas Grotesk
• Noto Sans / Source Han Sans

• Paper:
• generic coated-one-side art card
• TopKote Gloss

• Printer:
• Asia Pacific Offset

• Commissioner:
• M+

• Exhibitions:
• Art + Language: Contemporary Korean Graphic Design (Korean Cultural Centre Canada, Ottawa, 2022–23)
• Group Theory (DDP, Seoul, 2021–22)
• Sulki & Min: Clarifying & Obscuring (Transtage, Hangzhou, 2024)

• See also:
• 「A Compendium of Snapshots: Designing the History of M+」, M+ Magazine, 25 November 2021