How Studio Yukiko Turned an Exhibition Catalogue into a Unique “Tombstone” for Postmodernism Right on the cover, there is zero hesitation: a flat gray stone slab carved with the words Everything At Once, Post-Modernity, 1967-1992 sits flat against a bold red background. Skipping complex collages or stock photography, Studio Yukiko chose to transform the Bundeskunsthalle exhibition catalogue into a literal heavyweight “tombstone” for Postmodernism.

Pop the book open, and geometric stone blocks greet the reader at the start of every chapter. The phrase Ruins of Modernism rests on stacked steps, Protect Me From What I Want leans subtly against a pink page, and Anything Goes presses down on a stone pillar set over a turquoise background. The catalogue itself already carries serious physical weight, so rather than trying to disguise all that bulk, the design team embraced its massive heft to create a striking centerpiece.

The typography leans completely into rule-breaking energy. Typefaces representing different decades clash delightfully across single spreads: classic serifs sit right next to grotesques, and carved Roman lettering pairs up with chubby, rounded characters. Page numbers (17, 49, 107…) are blown up to massive sizes in the corners, while captions swell to nearly the size of the photos themselves. This layout completely flips traditional hierarchy on its head—small text gets giant, big images shrink down, yet everything stays neat and organized thanks to the underlying grid system. Artworks numbered 41, 42, and 43 line up cleanly with their captions right alongside, leaving plenty of open room for color to take center stage.

Color follows its own distinct visual system, too. Each chapter rocks its own bold, flat color palette: red for the opening, orange for the ruins section, turquoise for the anything-goes chapter, pink for the tombstone sections, and green for the table of contents. Staying true to the Everything At Once theme, the opening spread of each chapter packs all of that chapter’s images and captions onto a single double-page spread, displaying everything all at once.

To top it off, the promotional photos push this concept even further. Partnering with photographer Szymon Stepniak, Studio Yukiko produced a photo series featuring a bodybuilder lifting the heavy catalogue like a dumbbell—a hilarious detail that also nods to an era when the human body itself became a key medium for sculpting and performance art.

Check out more project details at y-u-k-i-k-o.com/projects/postmodernism/.