HKDI Gallery

Shigeo Fukuda

Shigeo Fukuda (1932 - 2009) graduated from the TokyoNational University of Fine Arts and Music in 1956 with a degree in design. Fukuda’s radically reduced formal vocabulary and his concentration on a few broad colour planes predestined him for designing pictograms. Reduction is the rule of the day in his posters, in terms of content, his works sparkle with Dadaist wit, optical illusions and surreal alienation, which ensure them a high recognition value.

 

Shigeo Fukuda
Victory 1945 (1975)

Shigeo Fukuda
Shigeo Fukuda: Illustrick 412 / GGG / Ginza Graphic Gallery (1986)

 

Ikko Tanaka

Ikko Tanaka (1930 - 2002) left his hometown of Nara to study at the Kyoto City College of Fine Arts. His poster designs reflect a thorough knowledge of Bauhaus theories while also drawing on the Japanese pictorial tradition. Tanaka’s international success can be attributed to this virtuoso interplay between Western and Eastern visual idioms. His versatile design approach secured him jobs from both the cultural and commercial sectors.

Ikko Tanaka
The 200th anniversary of Sharaku 1794 - 1994/ The Mainichi Newspapers (1995)

Ikko Tanaka
Nihon Buyo / UCLA / Asian Performing Arts Institute 1981 / Los Angeles / Washington DC / New York (1981, Reprinted in 1990)

 

Kazumasa Nagai

Kazumasa Nagai (b. 1929) attended the sculpture class at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Nagai’s early works were imbued with the spirit of international modernism. Starting in the eighties, he began to favor a more ornamental and figurative mode of design. His imaginative, highly original animal figures before a flat ground are emblematic of the symbiosis of human and nature that is expressed in the nature religion of Shintoism.

 

Kazumasa Nagai
’89 Himeiji Shirotopia Exhibition (1988)

Kazumasa Nagai 
Kazumasa Nagai Exhibition (1991)

 

Entering the Modern Era

Japan’s rapid development after 1950 into a leading economic power and consumer society meant that a new kind of visual communication was needed. First-generation graphic designers such as Yusaku Kamekura took their cue from the modernist style in the West, and displayed a rational, universally comprehensible approach, a reduction in shapes and colours, as well as the use of Latin writing in their works.

Yusaku Kamekura 
Nikkor lens (1960)

 

A Geometric Vocabulary of Forms

An inclination toward non-perspectival, two-dimensional renderings and a penchant for formal and functional abstraction still mark Japanese vernacular design today — elements that can be traced back to the historically important genre of the woodcut. Variations on the circle found in poster art can also be seen as part of this tradition. A prime example is Yusaku Kamekura’s poster for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

 

Yusaku Kamekura
Tokyo 1964 (1964)

 

The Expressive Power of Line

The Japanese woodcut — ukiyo-e — was discovered and enthusiastically received by the West after the economic opening of Japan in 1854. It influenced artists at the turn of the 19th century, giving birth to a stylistic mode known as Japonism. The technique of woodblock printing makes line and plane the main focus of pictorial composition. As a design element, line sometimes draws strongly on the expressive, realist tradition, but can also be used in a gestural and abstract manner.

Pedro Yamashita
America / Russia / No more sub-critical nuclear experiments (1998)

 

The Idea of a Thing

Concentration on the essentials, on the idea of a thing, shapes Japanese poster design even when concrete motifs are represented. By merely suggesting a subject, the artist leaves the viewer room to interpret what he sees and to charge it with his own meaning. This allows not only for rational understanding but also for the freedom to emotionally access a subject.

Matsunaga Design Inc. / Shin Matsunaga, Katsumi Yamada, Photo by: Yojiro Adachi
Season (1988)

 

The Filled Void

The metaphysics of emptiness, which is also understood as an expression of silence, is closely linked with Japanese Zen Buddhism. The lacuna is always to be read ambiguously as a space promising opportunities for meditation, concentration, time and peace. Poster design exhibits a self-assured handling of free space and a compelling interplay between pattern and ground.

Ken Miki
Wilderness / The place where civilization is forgotten, where man forgets himself. (1993)

 

The Intoxication of Colour

The posters of Tadanori Yokoo display an unrestrained delight in resplendent colour, seeming at first to belie the stereotype of Japanese asceticism. Tadanori’s works are typical of a poster culture that ranges between the poles of meditative tranquility and strident provocation. He began in the sixties to defy intellectual concepts in graphic design, and deliberately set out to shock viewers with his imaginative posters, rife with quotations.

 

Tadanori Yokoo 
Japanese Culture – The Fifty Postwar Years 1945 - 1995 (1995)

 

Transparency and Light

Japanese poster designers are masters of the sublime use of colour as a luminous, light-infused material. The vibrant compositions of Mitsuo Katsui, Koichi Sato and Shin Matsunaga open up versatile associations, alluding to psychic and mystical realms. Purification and unity with the universe resonate as additional layers of meaning in these atmospheric mood pictures.

 

Ken Miki, Shigeyuki Sakaida
Snow / Hokusetu Snow Mountain (ca. 2002)

 

Japanese Posters Today

The trends of the past continue to prevail in the contemporary poster, in which the actual advertising message is still of secondary importance. Instead, it’s all about conveying a specific identity through corporate communications, which in turn derive their impact from the decidedly individualistic touch of the artist/designer.

 

Katsuhiko Shibuya
Shiseido (2012)

 

Black and White in Dialogue

In Japanese philosophy, black and white form an existential contrast that encompasses all of life: day and night, life and death. A poster style is still widespread today that uses exclusively black and white — a tribute to the calligraphic tradition as well as a conscious rejection of the usual colourful imagery proliferating in the public space.

 

Masami Shimizu
Should I buy something? Vivre (1992)

Masami Shimizu
Shopping cheers you up / Vivre (1992)

 

A Fascination with Writing

While in the sixties, artists relied on the use of purely Latin script as a way to take part in international modernism, the eighties saw a deliberate reversion to Japan’s own writing tradition. In Fumihiko Enokido’s posters, lively calligraphy gives rise to a lyrical appearance, while today many designers confidently play variations on Latin typography and Japanese characters.

Fumihiko Enokido
Onao / washi (1984)

 

Copyright 2014 Hong Kong Design Institute and Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Educatiion (Lee Wai Lee)