Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production focuses on the activities of highly active designers, type foundries, distributors/retail spaces and Japanese design publications from the past ten years. The goal of this section is to help promote cognizance of graphic design activity in Japan — acknowledgement of such activity is often hindered by the linguistic and social differences between Japan and the rest of the world, yet this gap is lessening.

Booklet Press

A non-profit, small-scale press and independent publishing library located in Minato-ku’s Shibaura House. Run by architects Morishita Yu and Évita Yumul, Booklet is a free library devoted to small press initiatives, focused primarily on ‘zines and cultural publications.

More: http://bookletpress.org

Okano Kunihiko

A recent graduate of the TypeMedia program at the KABK in the Netherlands, Okano stands as perhaps the most nuanced and rigorous designer of Latin typefaces and lettering in Japan. His most recent typeface is Quintet, a layered script family available via House Industries’ PLINC system. Quintet demonstrates his years of experience studying the nuances of calligraphic lettering.

Kunihiko Okano’s approach represents a calligraphic-based approach that emphasizes legibility and readability in creating Latin character sets that complement the Japanese character sets for the typefaces he designs. A tireless and thorough craftsman, Okano is an unrelenting force in the Japanese sphere of typography. His work speaks for itself — graceful and poised type designs that retains the springy qualities of pen-rendering.

The AXIS Font family, much of which is the work of Okano, is the typeface family utilized by Apple, Nintendo, and Mazda to express the brands’ typographic voices in Japan. NTT Docomo, the largest mobile phone carrier in Japan, also utilizes AXIS as the default typeface for its handsets. Despite the contemporary styling of the AXIS Compact family, whose Latin forms follow the formal evolution of humanist sans serif typefaces such as Frutiger and Myriad, Okano is no mere default Modernist. His work exercises multiple perspectives — the chopped terminals of punch cutters, deep ink traps of the 1970s and 1980s, and exaggeratedly differentiated counter spaces enhance readability with one foot in the past and one solidly in the present. Okano’s typefaces move your eyes — some almost somnambulantly in their refinement, while others insinuate a rhumba, moving optics along in steady, surprising succession.

Okano’s logotype work operates in different terrain, often that of contemporary nostalgia — a national obsession with better days (given form via the 1995 movie Always — San-chôme no Yûhi, a gauzy, soft focus look at the post-War obsession with the automobile and the electric conveniences freshly offered to the general public at that time). While in no way overt, many of Okano’s works mine history for aspects of their base forms, then update them with the sharp angularity offered by an incisive sense of the contemporary. Okano is no retro revivalist offering up readymade solutions; his work is that of one who understands history, then synthesizes and sublimates the lessons of the masters into brave new form.

More: http://shotype.com

so+ba

This design studio in the Kyodo area of West Tokyo was established in 2001 by Swiss partners Susanna Baer and Alex Sonderegger. so+ba is active in the fields of graphic design, art direction, and sound visualization. Both partners teach typography and design at Tama Art University.

More: http://so-ba.cc

Dainippon Type Organization

Partners Tsukada Hidechika and Tsukada Tetsuya operate a hybrid typographic design practice and product design studio devoted to typographically-themed toys. Their “Toypography” project is a system of colorful, modular curved, and straight shapes for creating Latin and Japanese characters. Their playful take on connotative bilingual lettering treatments for corporate and commercial clients is both evocative and masterful, despite veering wildly from style to style.

More: http://dainippon.type.org

Yorifuji Bunpei

Mixing twee, oddball illustration, accomplished typography and pop color schemes, Yorifuji Bunpei’s work is omnipresent throughout Tokyo. Yorifuji-designed posters for the Tokyo Metro train system adorn every station and his public awareness campaigns for Japan Tobacco dot the streets of the city, reminding citizens of the potential good manners of smoking. His large-scale worked is backed up by the design of innumerable intimate art and photography monographs for small publishers like Nanarokusha (ナナロク社), Akagokusha (赤々舎).

Yorifuji has simultaneously produced multiple self-initiated projects. The yPad is a series of iPad-sized sketchbooks filled with grids, typographic tips, and project scheduling calendars intended to help designers. His bestselling self-published books The Catalogue of Death, Master of Imagination & Drawing and The Catalogue of Unco mix quirky illustration, oddball humor, and prose with appealing, well-considered typography and design.

More: http://www.bunpei.co/

Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production focuses on the activities of highly active designers, type foundries, distributors/retail spaces and Japanese design publications from the past ten years. The goal of this section is to help promote cognizance of graphic design activity in Japan — acknowledgement of such activity is often hindered by the linguistic and social differences between Japan and the rest of the world, yet this gap is lessening.

Typecache.com

A repository of type from around the globe broken down by style and foundry — an excellent resource provided by Yumiba Taro and Yoshino Akira.

More: http://typecache.com

Tsunekawa Ryochi

Tsunekawa is a thorough designer of nostalgic Latin display typefaces. Mixing Art Deco, post-War advertising, and early Modernist sensibilities, this former architect-turned-full-time type designer continually releases highly appealing, poppy type designs informed by history.

More: http://dharmatype.com

Oubunshotai & Oubunshotai 2

Linotype’s type director Kobayashi Akira has published two excellent books on the use and nuances of Latin type written in Japanese, published by Bijutsu Shuppansha.

More: http://www.bijutsu.co.jp

THA

Nakamura Yugo’s interactive design studio is one of the most revered in the world, blending generative software, broadcast direction, web design and development, module device user interface design and self-initiated projects like the Framed electronic artwork system.

More: http://tha.jp

W+KTokyoLab

Advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy launched their W+K Tokyo Lab record label and Tokyo office in 2003. The office releases CDs and videos of contemporary Japanese pop music alongside highly expressive videos of the label’s artists. W+K Tokyo Lab has released music and visuals by instrumental hip-hop pioneers Hifana, beatboxer Afra, emcee Chinza Dopeness, electronic artist Jemapur, and a number of others. Co-founded by Wieden + Kennedy partner John Jay, it was taken to its full form under the direction of fellow co-founders Eric Cruz and Bruce Ikeda (both no longer with Wieden + Kennedy) alongside form-giving collaborators Gino Woo and Shane Lester.

More info: http://www.wktokyolab.com

Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production focuses on the activities of highly active designers, type foundries, distributors/retail spaces and Japanese design publications from the past ten years. The goal of this section is to help promote cognizance of graphic design activity in Japan — acknowledgement of such activity is often hindered by the linguistic and social differences between Japan and the rest of the world, yet this gap is lessening.

Black Bath

Following a handful of years working alongside the expat design duo Namiki, Tamenaga Yasuyuki launched his studio Black Bath, focusing on graphic and interior design. Of particular note are his interiors for the offices of Google Japan.

More: http://black-bath.com

AQ

AQ is a digital design firm and consultancy based in Tokyo run by Chris Palmieri, Eiko Nagase, and Paul Baron. The firm founded Tokyo Art Beat, Tokyo’s online guide to visual culture events and create dynamic web design for a wide array of cultural and commercial clients.

More: http://aqworks.com

Art Space Tokyo

Written by Ashley Rawlings and Craig Mod, Art Space Tokyo acts as a 272-page personal guide and interpreter, connecting the reader with the neighborhoods and figures behind some of the most inspiring art spaces in Tokyo.

Each of the featured spaces has been rendered as a striking illustration by Takahashi Nobumasa. The book covers art spaces in neighborhoods such as Ginza, Yanaka, Gaienmae, Omotesando, Harajuku, Roppongi, Asakusa, and more. The neighborhood surrounding each art space has been meticulously mapped with recommendations for the best food, coffee and sights to enjoy in an afternoon of art viewing.

More: http://artspacetokyo.com

Akiyama Shin

One of Japan’s most prolific designers, Akiyama Shin has designed books for innumerable contemporary artists. He runs a Niigata-based practice and self-publishes his and others’ art and design projects via his edition.nord imprint.

More: http://akiyamashin.jp, http://editionnord.com

Axis type family

The definitive Japanese gothic typeface, designed by Type Project in conjunction with Kobayashi Akira and Okano Kunihiko.

More: http://www.typeproject.com

Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production focuses on the activities of highly active designers, type foundries, distributors/retail spaces and Japanese design publications from the past ten years. The goal of this section is to help promote cognizance of graphic design activity in Japan — acknowledgement of such activity is often hindered by the linguistic and social differences between Japan and the rest of the world, yet this gap is lessening.

Matsuda Yukimasa

Matsuda Yukimasa’s books have presence amid the veritable sea of published books in Japan. His works have a near-magnetic pull on bookshelves — slim in stature, handsome in finish, and painstakingly detailed in quality. As objects alone they resonate. The choice of fine papers, docked page edges, die-cut wraparound covers, and exquisite choice of colors and type speak to the tastes and vision of their creator. The form of his books always directly correlate to the content within — honoring it and extrapolating upon a visual theme in a contemplative, poetic, and non-literal way. To say they are “beautiful” books is an understatement — they are the types of books that would make designers of yore weep in testament to their immaculate execution. This is not hyperbole — the work of Matsuda Yukimasa is rugged, assured and holistic in scope inside and out.

Having first delved into the world of editorial design in the 1980s alongside Sugiura Kohei, Matsuda’s path has been one that is ascendant, yet immersed in the development of private projects — unceasingly wide-eyed in his pursuit of research and exploration, applied form and deliberate choice. He creates work that pulls from history as much as contemporaneity to inform the structure of each page with an emphasis on functionality as much as beauty. Highy focused, yet wide-ranging in subject, they would sit easily in the Books On Books section as well as Graphic Design, Typography, Anthropology, or Art.

Of particular note is his self-authored and designed ZERRO, published in 2003. A compendium of extinct, exploratory, ubiquitous, and imaginative visual languages and symbols that ranges from the nonsensical to the exceedingly rare, ZERRO displays the singular mind at work behind his Ushiwaka-maru publishing imprint. Each spread contains an example of a visual rubric, a short history of said collection and a visual example — some painstakingly redrawn and others reproduced immaculately. From Cree Script to the set of symbols deployed by the Japanese Navy to the Cipher of Alchemy to revisionist scripts from Japanese history at moments where orthographic reform felt so immediate and necessary to a handful of individuals, ZERRO offers thousands of entry points for further research. At the very least, it is a neat collection of inspiring reductive visual form and at its most a virtual camera obscura looking unto the world of sign, symbol, and meaning.

Each of the projects that Matsuda undertakes reveals his fascination and curiosity with language and natural form, with history and synthesis, and with curation and contemplation. Agnostic in style, yet florid in execution, his work is a wonder to behold — the books embrace life and experience in a way that few do.

We are at a moment in the continuum of graphic design where self-initiated projects carry as much weight as client-based projects and Matsuda fits more than neatly into this. More an archetype than a follower, Matsuda’s work enriches Japanese design culture in an active way — as a historian, a writer, an editor, a form-maker, a designer, and a publisher. His work is of near-utopian synthesis and each aggregate part is completed with acumen. For content, form and production to be so neatly folded together so tidily and yet so exuberantly is a treasure.

More: http://www.matzda.co.jp

Torinoumi Osamu/Jiyu Kobo

Born in 1955. Graduated from Graphic Design Course of Tama Art University. In 1989 Torinoumi founded Jiyu Kobo with Suzuki Tsutomu and Katada Keiichi, where he now works as both the CEO and type designer.

Torionumi has designed typefaces like Hiragino series (for Dainipon Screen Mfg., Ltd.) and the commissioned Koburina Gothic. He also designed more than forty typefaces, focusing on text type designs, as well as producing his own house brand The Yu-shotai Library whose releases include the Yu-Mincho family, the Yu-Gothic family, Yu-tsuki Midachi Mincho, and Yu-Kyokashotai M.

Jiyu Kobo received the first Keinosuke Satou award for its activities, the Good Design Award in 2005 for their Hiragino family, and the Tokyo TDC Type Design Award in 2008. Torinoumi teaches in the graphic design course at Kyoto Seika University.

More: http://www.jiyu-kobo.co.jp

Too Much

Subtitled the “Magazine of Romantic Geography,” Too Much focuses on cities through the lens of urbanism and the poetic. Founded by Tsujimura Yoshi of OK Fred Magazine and Cameron McKean of Paper Sky Magazine, Too Much treads an edgy path through the bywaters of global cities.

Excerpted from an interview with Cameron McKean:

After leaving New Zealand and moving to Tokyo in 2007 my ideas about what constituted “design” ballooned out, past all the commercial projects I’d done or seen, past art-making, and this ballooning-out eventually popped sometime around 2008. This was when I started writing as a way of taking things back to the beginning – just thinking and words. Later I started taking photos. My “practice” is one of demotivation and finding a single solid place to start from rather than a desire for interdisciplinarity or variety. Although we might have forgotten lots of the practical general skills our grandfathers knew, it seems that creative freelancers these days are generalists of a different kind — there are just too many possible spaces for design to exist in. Having a varied practice is just a necessary evil these days — how nice it would be to truly specialize!

More: http://toomuchmagazine.com

Utrecht

Situated in Tokyo’s bustling Omotesando neighborhood, Utrecht focuses on small publishing, both releasing their own titles and their bookshop housing a wide array of design — and art-oriented publications from all over the world.

More: http://www.utrecht.jp

Shirai Design Studio

Acting art directors and designers of Idea Magazine, Shirai Yoshihisa’s studio team are typographically rigorous, formally evocative, and gentle in treatment of ornament. Projects for Robundo, Ryobi, Seibundo Shinkosha and many other private concerns make up their body of work, celebrated in their recent book Typography Suite and the accompanying exhibition of the past two decades of graphic design work. Shirai is faculty at Musashino Art University.

Raymond Fernand Loewy will always be remembered as a pioneering industrial designer first and foremost — his automobile designs for Studebaker and the Greyhound bus. His streamlined objects, incorporating motion lines and intimating motion through their composition, are still indelible symbols of classic American design.

Loewy was born in France in 1893, having studied engineering there and serving in the engineer corps from 1914-1918. After moving to America in 1919 he began a short-lived career in fashion illustration before shifting his focus to product design. At the time “brand marketing” was still a primitive science, and the concept of “industrial design” was unknown to the big corporations. Product “design” was simply left up to the engineers. It was Loewy’s high-minded intention to turn corporate perceptions around.

Ever the self-publicist, Loewy carried business cards emblazoned with the legend “Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other.” Perhaps not as zippy as today’s catch phrases but it did the trick. Although he ran up against incredulity in conservative quarters, he gained the confidence of more forward-thinking executives who, struggling with increased competition in the aftermath of the Depression, began to see that good design could be a selling point. In many cases — for example, that of the Frigidaire refrigerator that Loewy designed for General Motors in the 1940’s — the companies saw sales skyrocket.

His accomplishments as a graphic designer are secondary in notoriety, though just as striking. In particular, his company’s logo design for Shell Oil and the ubiquitous Lucky Strike cigarette packaging are some of the best known examples of his work that carry on today, albeit in revised form.

However, it was another piece of Loewy’s cigarette packaging design that struck a chord in Japan — his project to redesign the packaging for Peace cigarettes.

Some of the first people in Japan to acknowledge the power of graphic design were the tobacco merchants in Meiji era Japan. From traditional woodcut print packaging to packaging utilizing elaborate design work and fine printing techniques, tobacco products from numerous merchants competed wholesale for public appeal. Coinciding with a marketing battle came an increased monopoly on the manufacture and sale of tobacco products — an increasingly limited number of companies offered their wares to the public in ever more elaborate packaging.

This came to a halt in the 1940s as World War II saw cigarette packaging become more reductive in both design and printing quality.

Loewy’s 1952 redesign of the packaging for Peace was a return to form for the Japanese tobacco market. Pre-war images of happy children and fireworks were eschewed in favor of an iconic, though oddly positioned geometric rendering of a dove in Loewy’s steamlined style. That the bird appears to be plummeting instead of flying upward is an odd stylistic choice, however it was elegantly rendered and the package has remained virtually the same since its inception.

What really caught the public’s attention was Loewy’s design fee for redesigning the ubiquitous brand. Unheralded in any sector of graphic design in Japan, the project fee for Loewy designing the packaging was a crisp ¥1,000,000 — a fortune at that time. The sheer amount had the nation atwitter and instantly skyrocketed public opinion of the work of commercial artists. Graphic designers and illustrators saw an increased perception of value in their work, as well as a noted increase in design fees in the years immediately following the Peace re-branding project. Other benefits in the Japanese workplace saw no such commensurate raised valuation, however, the elevated position of graphic design as a viable and valuable cultural practice through increased budgets for design was a boon for Japanese graphic designers.

It is worth noting this footnote in history in hopes of prominent designers working in Japan and abroad for the Japanese market making an effort to push both for an increase in client budgets and for a subsequent public disclosure of design fees. In a country where good design is considered both essential and integral to project success, design fees are estimated to be one-third to one-half of their analogs in North America and the Continent. Simultaneously, the social status of design workers continues to rise as the Japanese public becomes increasingly design-conscious and sophisticated in their design taste. Budgets, however, seem to be firmly fixed in place, though the global economic woes of late have taken their toll, as well.

Where is the modern-day Mr. Loewy now when we need him so desperately?