Link: Website of Fuji Arts Japanese Prints …
Hajime Namiki is a master of Contemporary Arts, born in Tokyo in 1947. He was fascinated by trees and captured their majesty and beauty in a modern style with traditional methods. Here you see a small collection of his exciting woodblock-prints, which he began to create since 1978. The nature scenes were printed on gold or silver leaf laid over Torinoko paper. You'll find more artwork of Hajime Namiki on the website of Fuji Arts.
Link at infomapjapan: PDF of Tokyo Subway Route Map
Japanese subway route maps show an interesting detail: each station has its own number. I didn’t see such system on any other subway map in Europe or USA, there are only station-names. I experienced, that numbers are really helpful for visitors, which are not familiar with the many names and maybe also can’t pronounce them well. It’s easier to memorize the number for to get off at the right moment. And with making a countdown (or ~up) from station to station you would quickly recognize, if you ride into the wrong direction. よくできました！
DNP (Dai Nippon Printing) is one of the largest and foremost printers in Japan with a rich heritage of graphic art and design. They have put on numerous exhibition in both Japan and abroad.
The outstanding role played by Japan’s culture of aesthetics in the birth of modern European art has continued through to this day in the unique development of Japanese graphic design - and in particular, through the genre of posters with their unmistakable aesthetic singularity, extraordinarily sophisticated printing techniques and immense power of expression.
I had already posted some examples of Ikko Tanaka’s art work. Here’s a 2nd series of his unique design style.
Ikko Tanaka has been honored by many awards: JAAC Special Selection, Mainichi Industrial Design Award, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Tokyo ADC Members’ Grand Prize, Purple Ribbon Medal, New York ADC Hall of Fame Prize, Tokyo Art Directors Club, Japan Cultural Award, and many more. The Art Directors Club wrote:
Strong, clean, and impactful are the best descriptives you could use to describe Ikko Tanaka’s work. They are universal images, honed with a fastidious eye: finding the natural flow of photographs in a book spread, steadying the central point of a corporate symbol so the mind retains every detail, and enriching the typographic and illustrative forces of a poster into a pure, homogeneous form.
Link: Website of ”pink tentacle“ ...
Source: Modernism on Paper | Japanese Graphic Design of the 1920s-30s (published 2003)
Link: Website of ”pink tentacle“ ...
Source: Modernism on Paper | Japanese Graphic Design of the 1920s-30s (published 2003). Quote:
In the 1920s and 1930s, Japan embraced new forms of graphic design as waves of social change swept across the nation. This collection of posters, magazine covers and advertisements offer a glimpse at some of the prevailing tendencies in a society transformed by the growth of modern industry and technology, the popularity of Western art and culture, and the emergence of leftist political thought.
This is the design of my this year’s Christmas Card. This is not really Japanese design, but it's a Japanese inspired card, using ideas like simplicity and ’verticality’, and it's printed on Japanese paper. I’ll try to get closer to a typical but modern Japanese design for Christmas 2012.
2nd picture shows the additional objects displaying the same design: a mini-card with envelope, a bookmark, a small jewelery-box and the ’mono-version’ of the card.
Quote from Wikipedia:
Ikko Tanaka (1930 – 2002), a well-known Japanese graphic designer. The characteristic of his designs is a blending of deeply rooted Japanese traditions with western modernism to produce contemporary visual expression. Ikko Tanaka’s work includes the design of the symbols for Expo 1985 in Tsukuba and World City Expo Tokyo 1996. Amongst others he has worked for the Seibu Saison Group, The International Garden and Greenery Exposition, Hanae Mori, Issey Miyake, and the Mazda Corporation. Tanaka has curated and designed exhibitions for the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and throughout Japan.
