Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization

DESIGN NEWS 266

('04.6.10)

Design It Yourself

Intuition to Creation

Sound Design Technology

Offshoring: a new threat to design?

Feature : Student Design Showcase 2004

It would be no exaggeration to say that The City of Advertising: Tokyo (Akihiro Kitada, Kosaido Publishing) and Learning from Akihabara: The Birth of a Personapolis (Kaichiro Morikawa, Gentosha, Inc.) are two “must-read” books for anyone who hopes to understand today's society.
These two books examine the death of the type of urban district represented by Shibuya and the birth of the type of district represented by Akihabara respectively. In the process of examining the roles played by advertising and architecture, they also offer a trenchant look at the state of society, capitalism and the individual. However, at the same time, the two books have become something very much like a death certificate so far as design is concerned.
According to Kitada, “designs” had already come to an end by the 1980s. He takes the example of the automobile and states that “from a temporal/spatial perspective the production-consumption process had lost its 'exterior'.” He explains that “spatial differences and technical differences had already disappeared” and that, in place of design, it was now “advertising had come to play the determining role in creating and communicating different images for the Corolla and the Celica respectively.” It might be possible to argue that if the shape or form of an automobile plays a role in terms of advertising, then design as such is still alive, even if its role has been limited to advertising. However, Morikawa goes on to offer definitive proof of the death of design by presenting an example of the painting of Boeing 747s. Since the appearance of the “Marine Jumbo” in 1993, designed by “a girl in the sixth grade of elementary schools,” the idea of having amateurs paint Jumbo jets demonstrates implicitly, according to Morikawa, that “the main appeal of the airplane has nothing to do with the professionalism of its design or even the content of the design, but rather is based simply on the fact that it was designed by an amateur.”
In this report, introducing these two books as the point of departure, he examines the features of a society which is moving away from the idea of design as something positioned within production activities to one in which consumers themselves become involved in the design process, which thereby itself becomes a consumer activity. Will it be possible to find a new point of departure for design whereby design is not regarded as an activity over which designers have special rights but is incorporated into the framework of consumer activities?

“I'm now 39 years old and have been working as a designer for 15 years. I stated recently that intuition has an extremely important role to play in the job of art direction, but it seems to me that intuition is a bit like a reflex cultivated by past knowledge and experience.
Practical experience gained as one works, reading a book or seeing a film, and indeed everything one has experienced in the course of one's everyday life from childhood down to the present all seem to come together to create the standards I use at any one time to judge whether something is good or bad. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's all about how I react at a particular time when a job comes my way. It's not at all interesting if it's just something I'm borrowing without using my reflexes. I'm not trying to say that there's something inside me. What I have inside me isn't particularly interesting, and I don't really want to bring it out. It's just that I think it's important to see how your body reacts when a ball comes flying toward you.
I used to read the fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin avidly during the 1980s, but we're living in a completely different age now, and it would be pointless to do the same thing all over again. I felt strongly in those days that Ryuko Tsushin was produced by men. But women were the main targets of the magazine, and the situation today isn't that people find what you do interesting just because you do something bold and outlandish. But the sense that something is being created inside the magazine or that some kind of event is under way-I find this kind of feeling extremely attractive and this is what I'd like to do myself. I'm not interested in tidying up information that has come from the side and transmitting it in a smart manner. It really doesn't worry me if it looks rough and ready, but what I want to do is get people interested in what's going on. That's the sort of magazine I'd like to see Ryuko Tsushin become.”
In this article, we interview Kazunari Hattori, who came to attention as an art director involve in magazine advertising for “Kewpie Half” by Kewpie Mayonnaise and the advertising campaign for JR-East “TRAiNG”. He was awarded the 6th Kamekura Yusaku Prize for his work on updating the fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin. We talked to him about his design work and the approach underlying it.