Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization

DESIGN NEWS 250

('00.6.10)

Feature (1): Subtraction Design

TKO Design

City Bus Advertising and Design

Contemporary Art out on the Tokyo Streets

US Desgin Today: IDSA Comes to JIDPO

Feature (2): Student Design Showcase 2000

The New York-based designer Alexander Gelman released a book entitled Subtraction: Aspects of Essential Design in the United States and Europe in January this year.
The book presents the author's design philosophy through the works of creative artists from all over the world. "Subtraction" focuses especially on the creative process standing at the core of approaches to creation. Gelman discovers outstanding designs and approaches to objects based on removal, subtraction and concealment in the work of designers, artists and architects.
Representative examples include Japanese geta clogs, M&Co's "5 O'clock Clock," and Issay Kitagawa's design for the book Hunter. This feature incorporates an interview with Alexander Gelman conducted during his visit to Japan in March, and focuses on the "subtraction" approach to design and Gelman's own design activities.

Since the company was founded in London a decade ago, TKO Product Design has been involved in the three fields of product design, interface design and research and forecasting in the UK and in the world as a whole. Andy Davey aims at a design approach much like that of a tailor who creates order-made clothing exactly in line with the customer's demands.

In this report we look at four projects which form part of the recent design activities, and discuss TKO's approach to design and the questions raised by product design.

Art is leaping out of museums and galleries and into the streets. We're not referring to "public art," which at one stage became so common as to seem like little more than oversized garbage. Contemporary art not requiring laborious interpretation and imbued with a light sense of reality is now linking up with urban functions.

The identity of these objects might be compared to convenience stores. All kinds of objects are displayed from a flat perspective, and people are able to incorporate themselves naturally into the environment. Despite being interactive, the objects do not force people to think about them or to act in a specific way. Convenience stores blend perfectly with the modern way of life and have thus proliferated in a short space of time. This feature so distinctive of Tokyo applies equally to aspects of the contemporary art scene in Tokyo. The art of our era has at last begun to blend in with society.

In this report, Chie Sumiyoshi introduces the work of artists who characterize the Tokyo art scene such as Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami, Makoto Aida and Masato Nakamura, along with the activities of the NADiff, Watarium and Tomio Koyama galleries, and sumiyoshi looks at the features and future prospects for the Tokyo art scene.

An exhibition entitled "US Design Makes the Difference" was held at JIDPO in Tokyo's Hamamatsu-cho between March 13 and 18. The exhibition incorporated a wide-ranging program including items that had previously been successful in the Industrial Design Excellence Awards and the Designs of the Decade awards, arranged by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Speeches were made at the "US Design Trends" seminar held on the first day of the exhibition by Mark Dziersk, Katherine McCoy, and Kristina Goodrich, all of whom visited Japan especially for the occasion.

Reflecting the major changes that have been occurring over the past decade in the United States design world, the speeches revolved around matters such as innovations in design processes, the roles of designers, and effects on design education.

In this article we include excerpts from the speeches made at the seminar by Mark Dziersk and Kristina Goodrich.

"Student Design Showcase 2000" presents an introduction to works by students who have recently graduated from Japanese design universities and colleges, and is edited annually by Design News. This is the eighth feature in this series, and in it we present works by students who graduated in 2000 from 37 colleges and 38 departments of design in Japan.

In coordination with this feature, we planned a round-table discussion to include this year's graduates. The subjects treated included what the students learned in the course of producing their graduation works, directions for the future, and new images of designers.

We include also an interview with Professor Hiroshi Harashima of the University of Tokyo concerning the so-called "interfaculty initiative in information studies" being set up in the university's graduate school to provide a fusion between the arts and sciences. This interfaculty initiative is provoking much interest in connection with the future of design education.