Found kanji/found fonts: 2

This (常) is read commonly as "jyou". It means "ordinary" but is part of the compound using two kanji that means "emergency" (or "extraordinary"). Here it's stenciled on a ship. Stenciled kanji already look somewhat abstract. In detail, as here, even more so.

Online, as it is, being the only way forward...

...is given an informed challenge, by the sounds of it, in Jaron Lanier's new book.

Jailed for possessing drawings deemed illegal

LO comic as featured in idea (アイデア）design magazine

A man in the US has been jailed for 6 months for possessing manga from Japan. Manga, that is, that represents child sex. Drawn porn.

Is this a tricky question of what's allowable in drawn images, or simply an invasive (mis)use of laws that should rightly protect real children? In this US court case, the question centred around whether there is "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" to the manga - the magazines, which are legal in Japan, could have been legal in the US if they had passed that serious artistic value assessment. Of course, both "serious" and "artistic value" are the troubled area. Is any drawing - and therefore any manga - automatically "artistic"? If so, what makes it "serious" or not? If not, what constitutes "art"?

I've never seen the specific comics the man has been jailed for - my interest in manga generally is passing rather than otaku (obsessive). I have seen fairly explicit father-child incest stories, coincidentally before I came to Japan, legally printed in a translated manga collection and legally available still, from Amazon for example, in both the UK and, in the US. (Though the story in that collection assumes that the 'children' are of age, however youthful they may be in drawn apperance.)

Nevertheless, even if I'd tend to favour the idea that this is an invasive use of law (the man possessed no child pornography using real children and had abused no child), there are obviously valid questions over depiction of children in such manga, but coupled with a solid question of whether anyone should ever be jailed for owning drawings done from the imagination.

Although he was prosecuted over seven particular comics, officials retained 80 books (after returning more than 1,000 as not containing contraband) including many from a comic called LO. (LO, pronounced "el oh", is short for Lolita, as in the name for the genre, lolicon - or "Lolita complex". Perhaps Nabokov would turn in his grave at the amount of appropriation his character has suffered.) That comic LO was retained piqued my interest as a designer, because last September's issue of the established Japanese design magazine idea (アイデア）was a special issue on manga and anime designs and featured some superb design and illustration examples over some 180 pages of the magazine, from excellent contemporary covers to the hand-drawn fonts of Osamu Tezuka - plus a four-page section on LO.

My (perhaps UK-honed) sensibilities over this subject made me double-take on LO's prominent inclusion in a serous design magazine. Design-wise it clearly deserves a spread in such an issue - some of the cover designs and cover illustrations are really good design. But content-wise it's at least debatable that it does - can design ever be successfully judged separately to content? Graphic design is most often a way of presenting clearly, engagingly or expressively that very content. Under that debatable banner, should we expect some commentary at the least - or is that hypocritical if the magazine is legal and being featured in an issue themed around the topic? (After all, a feature on the "serious" and "valued" - and American - outsider artist Henry Darger in an art magazine could probably pass without comment.)

Does a presumably soft genre magazine (I've never seen the inside, only the covers featured in idea) such as LO allow free representation of imagination - and, under one argument, perhaps incidentally "filter out" potential real-world perverts into a mere drawn-image fantasy world - or encourage them in some actual preference for young girls? Should we ever censor drawings (in terms of passing jail terms on individuals owning them) as a society? (As a designer, I'd argue not.) Shouldn't we only prosecute actions or intended actions on real people, not the imagination, however much mainstream society may disapprove?

Many may find it hard to sympathise with an otaku collector of manga - or even ponder whether many in Akihabara or the like couldn't benefit from the enforced psychological tests the man in the US will undergo - but lack of sympathy surely shouldn't degenerate into willingness to see jailed. As a designer, I can only ask the questions.

Designer black

Black continues its niche (but well promoted) presence among Japanese products. Black was already back some years ago, but this month saw a push for two Black-named cigarettes. Marlboro's Black Gold (new 8mg!) got promoted to the extent of, for example, shrouding the above cigarette-vending machine in advertising and modifying it to sell only Black Gold.

Not to be outdone Lark cigarettes promoted their Black Label pack - launched at the end of last year - in competition with Marlboro on my local convenience store's counter.

Why "Black" fags should be big in Japan (and Asia?) but not elsewhere, I'm not sure. (Admittedly, smoking is less restricted in Japan - compared to, say, Europe and the US - but that is in the process of rapidly changing, to the extent of a new law on smoking in offices and restaurants being considered.)  The colour's traditional association with "cool" may explain its appeal, but why another association - with the colour of smokers' lungs - doesn't spring to mind, again, I'm not sure. (Incidentally, Black Marlboro have a Facebook fan page with over 5,000 members - and they can be bought online priced in US dollars from Indonesia!)

But black labelled cigarettes are just one presence in maintaining a definitely small - but presumably reliable - selection of black products in Japan. Three years ago, the now-defunct (but archived here) online Ping Mag mentioned various goods - for example, black cotton buds - which are often still available now in Japan. Meanwhile, for another month Panasonic will be plugging their "night color" (ie, black) product range in a campaign that started in October last year, as, coincidentally, did Ponds' advertisement for their black face-cleanser which is also currently on TV. (The cream may be black - charcoal based - but it leaves your face clear, naturally.)

Add to these black face-packs, nose-pore cleaners and more. It may be that black is a designer's favourite, "alternative" but somehow mainstream, but it obviously connects with a minority of steady, alternative-but-mainstream buyers in Japan. To gain a small niche, perhaps, think black.

An embarrassment of riches

To learn about lesser known parts of Japanese art history, go local. At least that's so judging by at least three exhibitions I've seen in museums outside of (though easily accessible from) Tokyo in the last few years.

The most recent ended last weekend - in Saitama's Museum of Modern Art (on a direct line only some 45 minutes from Tokyo) - and presented the work of Settai Komura (小村雪岱). Under-recognised within Japan as well outside (an art magazine feature about the show had the coverline "Do you know Settai Komura?") I'd guess that for most people, like me, his work is something of a revelation.

With 250 or so works on display there are a couple of ways of reacting to such a scope of material: be swamped and recognise you'll not (OK, I will not) achieve anything like the quality and quantity on display. Or be inspired.

Settai Komura was active in the first few decades of the last century, working much on art for books - book designs, story illustrations, end-paper artworks. But he wasn't limited to - or, for that matter, by - that and 'active' is the right word. He produced sketches, illustrations, woodblock prints, paintings, posters, kimono designs, set designs. He designed bottles for Shiseido - and even designed their logo font.

The exhibition shows that his talent was exceptional - his rough sketches still showed quality, his finished pieces were often superby realised. (Sometimes he worked through both stages of execution - the image of umbrellas in the rain above was originally an illustration for a newspaper, then a more realised drawing and finally a woodblock print.) His style frequently drew directly on traditions in Japanese art - one book end-paper features an empty Japanese street in perspective, with a woman in the foreground, her face turned away from us and looking down the street, one of many realisations in Settai's work of the unsaid and unseen in Japanese art - but he also might merge a Japanese style of line with a hint (or occasionally an explicit suggestion) of art nouveau.

Other book end-papers were designed and painted with beautifully split arrangements over the two-page spread, balancing an emptiness on one page with a detail on another, for example (or, in one case, with a folding screen suitably placed to be part of the layout of a three-way fold).

His works stand on their own, but were often displayed here in their original books etc. The line between "commercial" artist and "pure" artist is often blurred at least and is easily crossed back and forth here - perhaps because he was making products (books, stage sets, kimonos) which had a share in his creative view, and vice versa. It's much as even now when artist Tadanori Yokoo works comfortably in a commercial world. (Yokoo also makes posters for clients - even the same one, Shiseido - as well as magazine cover designs etc.) Interesting, perhaps, from a "Western" view, where the commercial line has always been more defined, at least in the delineation of "pure" artist.

Settai died in 1940, so this is an historical exhibition, but made just that little more interesting as e-readers are at the early stages of introduction. Whether printed books will survive easily alongside e-books, whether special print editions will be more sought after, or whether designing for, and reading in, print will become a dying art is still undecided - while we continue, of course, to have well designed print books, of which these historical examples are just great. (See today's other post.)

So, kudos to the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, for assembling the show. And in future posts I'll mention a couple of other shows relevant to this blog and from "local" museums.

–––––––––––– Examples of Settai's work ––––––––––––

Settai's design and illustration for the story Osen with the fact that he's illustrating a book cleverly reflected in the folded screens of the cover.

Legs disppearing into the water: an illustration for the novel Osen.

Three stages: sketch, model and in action

On e-readers in Japan

The Mainichi Daily News (English-language web site of the Mainichi Shimbun) on how the spread of e-readers (when it happens) will affect publishing in Japan

Who'd have thought it...

(Notes on Japan through design: 3 - covering up)

 
...but an unplanned use for an e-reader, thinks columnist Charlie Brooker, might be to hide what you're reading. This feat has been achieved in Japan by books being provided with a cover - that is a cover to cover the cover. And so to make anonymous what you are reading.

I've never seen the use of this - unless you might want to hide a 70s-style science-fiction illustration as shown above, for example. So I've always said no when asked if I want a cover for the book I'm buying (more of an optional service anyway, perhaps, for foreigners who flaunt their books).

But Brooker has spotted what I didn't realise before - that it may be a service that is wanted outside of Japan. The disguising cover is available with the product here in Japan, while the e-reader would make the product itself invisible, and only the carrier visible. Who'd have thought it a benefit?

Overheard in the newsroom - Feb 12

#3099

Designer working on a logo for an anti-drug series: “No, that won’t work. Bodoni is far too classy for drug addicts.”

Bucking the trend

Both the UK's satirical Private Eye and The Oldie are increasing print sales. And neither have much of an online presence. Is it the age of their audience (as the prejudice has it that older people aren't comfortable with the online)? But Private Eye has a wide age-range of readers in my experience, and plenty of "oldies" are actually familiar with online. Or is it their refusal to fully encompass being online? The Spectator, often - as in the article linked above - lumped with these publications, has many online features and is losing print circulation. Naturally, a brief glance and guesswork won't tell you the answers to such questions, but it's still interesting that some magazines are bucking the trend.

(Added Feb 15: Private Eye puts it down to familiarity and trust - especially at the time of a politician's expenses row in the UK.)

Bam B break into a top 50

Today is release day for the debut CD from a cappella group Bam B Crew (with packaging designed and all cover photos by yours truly). Already on release day, and even though it's an independent debut with little pre-publicity, it's number 49 in Amazon Japan's top J-pop sellers. Looking forward to and wishing good things for Bam B.

Getting ads right...

... doesn't seem to be a forte of Turkish airlines in recent days, if these two samples are anything to go by.

Here they show the need for making two versions of an ad when considering this positioning:

While here they demonstrate the need for more care when using Photoshop (ie, don't delete the front wheel):

Thanks to Buzzfeed via Andrew Sullivan, and Photoshop Disasters

Drop it in

eed a drop cap for the start of your blog's text (and assuming that you are not satisfied with your own design attempts to make one)? Well, typographer Jessica Hische is kindly providing one daily (with a little accreditation but free under creative commons usage) with which you can decorate your words with some old-fashioned, print-style typography. What more could you ask?

Lost in Japan

(Notes on Japan through design: 2 - Changing Maps)

Once you are inside Tokyo's Shinjuku JR (Japan Rail) station and on the underground concourse leading to 16 platforms, there are no route maps. To use the rail lines is a feat of pre-knowledge and, presumably, of being unlikely to decide to change your destination once inside. It's a feat achieved without thinking by Tokyoites in our day-to-day use of the station, but one whose idiosyncratic cause – lack of maps – still puzzles me.

Chigaseki, outside of Tokyo. The map is still there, but functionless

Meanwhile, when it comes to street addresses, most offices and shops will provide a link to their website where they provide a map and details of how to find them. Many of these self-designed maps, especially those on alternatives such as advertising flyers or business cards, are decidedly simplified, with unimportant streets removed and angles straightened. The worst of these can be as confusing as not having a map. Some years ago, I once was given a map to an office which was as much written as diagrammatic, temporal as much as spacial – "turn left and walk 4 minutes" was the instruction at a junction. I turned left and walked 2 minutes before the street ran out. Backtracking and using the supplementary landmarks (a convenience store, naturally) I discovered the building about a minute down the street.

All this is unusual to an ex-Londoner, from a city where it seems everyone has the paperback-sized bible, the London A-Z, a map of the city in book form. Be given an address, look up the street, go there.

Tokyo's streets require different navigation. (The need for this is because Japanese addresses are based on blocks and areas rather than streets and numbers.) And one such navigation aid for the lost are roadside maps. They come in various forms – handwritten, one-off prints, or more permanent ones provided by the ku (council), to show the general area (or perhaps escape routes in the event of an earthquake). The former group of styles, although functional, are usually commercially driven (a business, as I understand it, pays to be featured) and although many are brand, spanking new, others are entering the forgotten autumn (or winter) of their lives. Atmospherically becoming lost themselves. Those are the ones I like - the clear may be functioning, the decaying are an example of form over function.

Itabashi: The map's age-cracks have overlaid the streets

The maps are everywhere but often unnoticed. Surely they must be used, but perhaps not in proportion to their prevalence: there are ten at my local station which serves one train and one bus. They appear not only at stations and bus stops, but many a crossroads and an area's edges. The one at the bus stop at the end of my street (certainly not a central area) didn't have a "you are here" indicator, didn't feature the bus stop, and didn't feature the only building opposite the stop (an old-people's home: presumably they didn't pay). Before a recent, though not comprehensive, update this must have made it difficult to find a starting point let alone how to get somewhere else.

An amateur psychologist, and one greater than me, might find a parallel between the generic (and stereotypical) Japanese fondness for travel in groups, for following an itinerary on trips, for following directions from bosses in the hierarchies of business, and this reliance on others for directions on how to get somewhere. (Whereas the Londoner is given a destination and has to chose how to get there themselves.) But others might say that amateur psychology will never direct you anywhere useful either.

Sengawa: various styles among the dozen or so maps at the station

 

Methods for finding your way are changing quickly, anyway. As much as to self-designed maps, links to maps online now often lead to a Yahoo or Google map. If not, type in a Japanese address yourself into either search engine's map section and you will be pinpointed onto an accurate map. Coupled with car navigation and keitai (mobile phone) GPS positioning, I must admit some of the "fun" is going out of finding your way - and being replaced with the accuracy of actually getting there.

Presumably, because of this, more printed maps explaining the urban clutter in Tokyo and the rest of Japan might end up by the wayside – and lost. As yet, they still populate many areas, but they may yet be another victim of online resources.

Useful and clear, though why a smaller one is stapled over a larger one instead of replacing it is unclear

 

(PS: A side note about Google's Street View mapping of Japan - the camera mounted atop the cars which go around photographing the streets is lower than in other countries. This is to maintain more privacy, that personal space in crowded Japan, as it's less likely to be able to peer over higher garden walls.)

50 reasons why Tokyo is best....

CNN comes up with its reasons here. Finding 50 reasons for any city to be "number 1" is tricky, so the journalist(s) do OK here. It's part of a series of cities, so this is an argument for Tokyo rather than claiming it's best. (Monocle placed it fourth!)

Any Tokyoite will find reasons missed off or won't agree with inclusions (as a Londoner originally, claiming Tokyo's parks as a reason for its greatness is like claiming London's safety: both are relatively true, though each would clearly win over the other in such categories.)

For me, missed off are multiple small restaurants or bars: 6, 8, 12-seater places (being introduced to one curry place in Sangenjaya, finding a soba place with ume-flavoured soba locally, being shown into a kabuki-fan-only, unsignposted gay bar etc. All unique.) And - even in an expensive city - being able to live reasonably well for small money (100 yen shops, convenience stores, affordable restaurants etc)

Tyler Brûlé on JAL

How to fix a fix: journalist, magazine publisher (Wallpaper*, Monocle), designer (eg Swissair) and Japanophile Tyler Brûlé on the troubles facing Japan Airlines.

2 in 1: what's your type? And the iPad

Pentagram is a London-originated design company with major clients and know-how. For a minor distraction from their major work, you can take their online "what type are you?" test which will decide your personality (OK, it doesn't really - I hope) and match you to a typeface. I think I erred on the rational side and came up somewhat too traditional with Perpetua Titling Light (pictured). I like it, but it's not really me. (Or perhaps I don't know myself well enough!) You may be closer: try it out here...

 

Of course, fonts are more 'important' than many a client may think, and the opposite (matching a font to a client - or at least their work) is undertaken all the time. (I matched the sharp-looking, newly built and fresh Afghan embassy in Tokyo with a sharp, fresh, clear font designed in the same year, for example.) So just reverse it for a change and match yourself to a font with Pentagram's bit of online distraction.

Meanwhile, if you're on the Pentagram site, you may like to cut through the chatter and clatter around 'it's a hit'/'it's a bomb' after Apple launched the iPad and see what one of Pentagram's experienced designers thinks it might change...

The Guardian editor and BS

The Guardian editor gave a speech on the future of newspapers and their potential to walk into "oblivion". Money-making Rupert Murdoch disagrees, here.

Another way to sell magazines...

...when many are apparently struggling. I've never read LOVE, although their (also naked) Beth Ditto cover was a superb design - and more fun and just a tad more 'challenging' than models' bodies. Selling magazines with bags is one way, getting eight top models to pose naked and having eight separate covers is another.

Ice and snow

The local convenience store was perhaps relying on the mild winter weather continuing when Tokyo got its first snowfall last night.

(Actually, to give Ministop its due, the other flags were promoting hot dogs, so I guess they hedged their marketing bets as winter isn't over yet.)

Reversing the trend...?

A detail from Dars' website showing the reversed-logo packaging
and a woman saying "Give me."

Dars is a popular chocolate. Valentine's Day a popular day for giving chocolate. For some reason, though, it's the tradition only for girls to give boys chocolate on Valentine's Day in Japan, and not necessarily for loved ones - many an office will see female employees giving close male colleagues chocolate. (And, like many a Valentine's Day purchase the world over, this "tradition" started as a marketing idea.)

But there is - apparently - a trend starting for boys to also give girls chocolate on Valentine's Day. So Dars' manufacturer Morinaga (not to miss an opportunity - or, who knows, to help promote one) has brought out a Valentine's edition of its chocolate for the boys to give. The trend is a reversal of "roles", so Morinaga have reversed the Dars logo, and made a package for boys only to give. (And, not incidentally, increase sales of Dars chocolate.)

Will it become a tradition? Or is it a risky confusion of a logo? It certainly caught my eye in a convenience store and made me wonder what it's for, so I'd bet on it being a success this year at least.