Yes, something like that really did happen once.
The Design of Chance.

This artist's book is by Kazunari Hattori, the graphic designer who created the key visual identity of FRAGILE BOOKS, including its logo and care marks.

As an art director and graphic designer, Hattori has developed a visual language that is at once gentle and incisive. Over the course of his career, he has designed numerous publications, including the magazines Ryuko Tsushin, Mayonaka, and here and there, as well as books such as the Petit Royal French–Japanese Dictionary and NAKAJO. Surprisingly, despite his extensive work in book design, he had never before published a book of his own. This volume is therefore unique: an artist's book conceived, photographed, designed, and written entirely by Hattori himself.

The book features twenty-three paper cats—simple cat silhouettes cut from paper with scissors and then photographed. Built around a single, deceptively simple idea, it is the kind of work that appears easy enough for anyone to imitate, yet somehow remains unmistakably Hattori's. The forty-eight-page hardcover, wrapped in a vivid blue cover, resembles the elegant packaging of a confection. It was published by BONBOOK, the publishing imprint established by one of Japan's oldest printing companies.

"I was probably the last generation of designers to work with phototypesetting," Hattori once remarked.

From his early years at Light Publicity, where he joined in 1988, through establishing his own studio in 2001 and continuing to the present, he has witnessed more than three decades of dramatic change in typography, printing, publishing, and graphic design itself. As digital tools became increasingly precise and efficient, design seemed ever more capable of producing perfectly calculated results.

Hattori quietly resisted that tendency.

"Resistance" may sound too dramatic. It was simply that he disliked design that unfolded exactly as planned. Instead, he sought moments of accident—small deviations, unexpected occurrences, and subtle imperfections that no software could predict.

That embrace of chance became one of the defining characteristics of his work, from the celebrated advertising campaign for Kewpie Half to his art direction for Ryuko Tsushin. It also lies at the heart of this book.

Remarkably, the concept for the entire project was settled during our very first meeting at Hattori's studio in Nishi-Azabu. He has an extraordinary ability to grasp another person's intentions, occasionally interjecting with a sharp observation, and almost instantly transforming an idea into visual form. There are few detours, no prolonged deliberations, and very little unnecessary conversation.

Looking back, it seems that what truly propelled this project was Hattori's desire to return to designing with his own hands and body—to rediscover a physical, tactile process of making, where chance could once again become part of the work.