I never read — yunxiye.com

I Never Read, Art Book Fair is an annual art book fair held in Basel. The name originates from a quote by Andy Warhol, discovered by founders Wüthrich and Willi during a visit to a Warhol exhibition at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. The phrase resonated with the fair’s intention. It was adopted as its title: a metaphor for a platform dedicated to exploring the relationship between text, performance, art production, and the book. It embraces texts that may never be read in a conventional sense, yet still embody forms of knowledge.

Building on this conceptual foundation, this rebranding project focuses on the shifting states of “read” within the context of the book fair. Linguistically, read remains unchanged in form across present, past, and future tense, yet its meaning is activated through time and context. Similarly, visitors to the fair move through distinct states—not yet read, reading, and having read—as they enter, engage with, and leave the exhibition space.

By aligning these temporal reading states with the unchanging form of the word read, the project treats time itself as the core branding structure. Rather than redesigning the fair as a static identity, the rebrand operates as a temporal system. In this way, the visual identity reflects reading not as a fixed action, but as an ongoing condition shaped by presence, duration, and experience.