Designer hero

I've just finished reading the latest Osamu Tezuka book which has been translated into English – The Book of Human Insects. An odd, noir tale of a woman who achieves success by stealing the work and/or personality of those around her (from actresses to assassins). The anti-heroine is the book's main character, but virtually the only one of the book's cast with a properly good character is a designer. Perhaps the first book I've read with a designer as any kind of "hero". (The book is not necessarily one of Tezuka's best and perhaps less of a social commentary than many of his darker stories, but it's decidedly nihilist combined with being over the top, and is still a good read.)

Tokyo Photo

I went to Tokyo Photo 2011 last weekend. It's a fair in which a large grouping of photography galleries displayed a selection of their works. And the work covered older work to current, Japan and abroad. Its opening display was a selection of Tohoku-earthquake themed works from a mix of French and Japanese photographers organised by the French Embassy – although we can move swiftly through that the work in the exhibition hall proper. As with any fair it was filled with the good, the bad  and the ugly. Among the very good was EMON gallery's work which I've featured twice in this blog. Plenty of history (from early Daido Moriyama to Andy Warhol) was on show, but for me personally, also standing out among the good, were a couple of works which took history and gave it a modern twist.

Meguma Takasaki, above, from Picture Photo Space, created a piece that looks like an ink painting but on close up is made of details of leaves. Hisaji Hara, below, from the Gallery MEM, made mock narratives looking like some revamp of Yasuzo Nojima-era photographs.

Much else was good (much else was not) but these were two from recent years that lingered with me. As I looked around Chris Shaw was giving a talk (in association with London's Tate Modern), about work that also harks back to earlier styles with a contemporary, rushed and dirty feel.

Traveling far?

When I last mentioned a print magazine launch in Japan (relaunch in fact; it was WIRED) what I thought was going to be a regular issue turned out to be a one-off. I'm not sure why: whether it was intended as just a single promotion for a returned web presence or simply failed.

So let's hope I can welcome another launch – which I think is aiming to be quarterly – for a longer time. It's a travel magazine for women called Bird. Is there a market for a women's travel magazine? Perhaps there are other travel mags which are just a tad macho in appeal, in which case it could be that Bird has perhaps discovered a niche or an audience. Anyway, it's an attractive (semi-gloss coated, textured cover), perfect bound (and 130-page), photo-led publication (with even a tie-in feature with the instant-film Impossible Project) that looks worthy of a place in the market.

Good fonts headline a breadth of subjects (can't say about the depth – not being able to read enough Japanese! – and a headline like "Before the flowers bloom," which introduces various women, seems a little twee). But it has a interesting feel overall. The launch issue is dedicated to a theme of American travel. Backed by Blues Interaction (which did the Japan version of Fader magazine, for example).

(The British slang of "bird" for "girlfriend" or "woman" is not currency in Japan, so any associated, possibly negative, perceptions presumably don't exist – the title works for "flying" and "free" and possibly "feminine.")

Mariachi Samurai

Previously I thought the only major Mexico-Japan connection was the 400-year-ago shipwreck in Onjuku. But then I was asked to design the Mariachi Samurai CD cover. I'm a bit late in posting this, as the CD was released last week. The band went with my illustration of a sombrero/kabuto (samurai helmet) combined on a gold background for the cover. To also get a mash-up with the font, I used History, a font made with 17 versions, deliberately designed to be overlaid for different effects. I made the MS logo in Japanese style, but backed with a more "Mexican-feel" (a non-specific concept) star. Finally, I took the portraits and live images for inside.

Oyako-no-hi

Bruce Osborn has been taking oyako (parent and child) photos for 29 years and has organised his day of photographing, oyako-no-hi (parent and child day), for 9 years. The general run of his oyako shots are often adult children with a parent or parents, the oyako-no-hi is more of a festival of family shots. This year (in July) he photographed 109 families on that one day.

It's a high energy shoot (as well as being physically up for it, he recognised that he should have trained his voice as well) and it's a definite celebration of family. Each shot is taken in a necessarily quick turnaround, but his method of getting the pose (often involving the family jumping into a close group pose or some similar action) actually gets some seemingly intimate shots. Sometimes the jump seems to reveal a balance of energies and focus – like the little black-hole of energy the child seems to be below.

Others are simply good fun.

While the occasional back-story can reveal more: the family below had lost all their family photos in the tsunami earlier this year.

It takes some organising (Bruce used a double studio, with the one acting as a holding tank while he worked in the other). For the 9 years of the festival day and 29 years of shooting, they have all been black and white, despite the change to digital. But that, like the shots, is simple and effective. Next year will be the round-numbered 30 and 10 year anniversaries, meaning perhaps a larger celebration of some kind.

A search for form and land…

I went to see an exhibition last week, titled FORM, by Ryo Ohwada at the EMON Photo Gallery - a small, neat gallery in the backstreets of Hiroo.

Ohwada's photographs are of bonsai against gold background and the finished work is often assembled from various shots taken with different ambient light. This makes both a backward look at tradition (in both form of the work and the bonsai themselves) coupled with a contemporary, updated feel of both. As single shots or single assembled images, diptychs, triptychs and more, they play with references to paintings and traditional screens – or they ride on their own strength.

Beautiful work, in which the main aim is beauty itself, but with an exploration of tradition – and, of course, form. The bonsai themselves are museum pieces, some 200-300 years old, and it's a thought in itself that they have been cared for daily for that time span.

I love it when tradition is both maintained and updated in this way. Ohwada previously won a young photographer's award for his close-ups of the colour of vintage red wines – beautiful shots as well, but these new ones take tradition and its forms a stage further.

Portraits: 20

Elmore Leonard, author, hotel in London, 1988
He was a good sitter in that he sat comfortably and simply, and even in the confines of a hotel room, some expression of his character – or the character of him in his profession of crime writer – came through. I used a favourite technique of "cornering" at the edge of an image – and his quizzical, off-centre expression seemed to lend itself more than most. There's something of a feel of him "entering the frame" which seemed to go well with a crime writer in this one, so I liked this shot most. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

A problem of promotion?

The government has unveiled the latest element of "Cool Japan" – the logo above designed by brand- and design-meister Kashiwa Sato. There's no denying Sato's design ability – he is the man behind great work for Uniqlo, SMAP, Kirin and the like. (And so cool himself, my browser won't display his website – I must upgrade something!)

So how does this design fare? I can imagine the neat, zooming Hinomaru circle branding many a "Cool Japan" product or event. Yet, while I don't want to rain on any Japan-promotion's parade, there seem to me to be problems.

One is not exactly of Sato's making, and perhaps is the least problem, and that is the very current association of the Hinomaru circle with the earthquake. Sato says in the press release that he designed the logo with the image in mind of a Japan that is overcoming the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster (the press release doesn't mention the nuclear aspect) and is reborn, so he was clearly associating the logo and the earthquake. But we've just had several months of designs – many prominent world-wide – of the red circle expressing the damage done as well as the hope of a rising sun. Is the "Sputnik" re-birth element in this new design forward-looking enough, or is the recent publicity for Japan just enough to, at a glance, make a "disaster" association the first association?

(Imagine another scenario, which this rebirth design could fit. Imagine the words said THE NEXT TEPCO. Is the logo an expression of a scientific future or a future fireball? Its positivity would be the former before any disaster, but could be the second when post-disaster – and we are in a post-disaster Japan.)

But that's perhaps too simple a criticism, and Japan's flag is the red circle, so it still has to be worked with, and anyway opens up many potential uses. So as I said, that's a lesser problem. Also a small problem is the fact that it looks like the Mastercard logo. Again, that can be overcome in argument by the design simply being another variation on the circle. But it still brings in a business, corporate (rather than "cool") feeling – is this a film, manga and arts logo or an excellent business one?

And that leaves the words. JAPAN NEXT. Hitachi puts "next" in its phrase "Inspire the next" to good use: "next" suggests future; "inspire" is, well, inspirational; the combination suggests the work of people NOW inspiring the next generation, passing down great ideas that are nevertheless coming from right now. But with JAPAN NEXT there is no verb or instruction and next becomes merely something in the future. JAPAN NEXT implies there's something first. Imagine it as a travel slogan: Japan next (but first I'll go to France). It wants to suggest a future – where Japan is going – but it really only suggest a plan or a second-place: Japan next (after it's sorted out its current problems). Even THE NEXT JAPAN would be an improvement.

This is additionally strange, because there is a trend in Japan to use the English "now" as a "borrowed word" within Japanese and transliterated as なう ("nau"). It's especially used for tweets when saying what you're doing or where you are ("izakaya nau", "drinking nau" etc etc). Surely that trend and the simple immediacy of JAPAN NOW would be a straightforward improvement. This isn't a plan, a second stage, this is a priority and is happening at this minute. Japan is recovering, Japan is cool – it's not a plan for the future.

I'm not a fan of negativity or of pretending that I can criticise from my backwater a very talented designer like Sato who does superb, unquestionably first-class (and "cool") branding work. But there just seem to be those three crucial problems with this.

On the plus side, it is simple, visually catchy and recognisable – and maybe that is plenty.

Radiation and risk

Since the Fukushima plant began spewing radiation, everyone in Tokyo (and, it goes without saying, everyone closer to the plant) has been trying to work out what experts say about radiation doses – more relevant to us in Tokyo are low but continuous radiation doses (via food, since mostly air-borne radiation is too low to matter). On the whole I'm not worried, but one expert doesn't seem to agree necessarily with another – and when it comes to food, nobody seems particularly clear. Because I was attempting to get as accurate as possible assessment of this myself and finding conflicting data from different "experts", I suggested to the editors that a brief article on who is an "expert" on radiation and how can we analyse expert opinion would be good for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine. Gavin Blair wrote the piece in this month's issue and above is my layout and illustration for the print edition. For the simple illustration I took a dice image and added the radiation symbols: the "danger" or "safety" is of course a risk assessment, but also a risk assessment is the accuracy of different experts. Hence the throw of the dice.

I had wondered about believing sub-atomic-level physicist and string theorist Michio Kaku ("we came close to losing northern Japan"); journalist and green campaigner George Monbiot (who converted to being a supporter of nuclear power after Fukushima because of its overall safety); Chernobyl researcher Tim Mousseau – who is nevertheless partly contradicted by Chernobyl researcher and previous colleague Sergey Gaschak (one of whom must be nearer the truth); nuclear industry insider Rod Adams on his reassuring Atomic Insights blog; or Tokyo University medical researcher Professor Kodama who relayed the dangers he saw in a speech to the government here. Gavin Blair made it into proper article.

Also in the issue: Kazuma Obara's secretly taken photographs from inside the damaged Fukushima station.

9/11 magazine covers

The Society of Publication Designers has a selection of 9/11 magazine covers from the past 10 years, grouped in three collections of years here, here, and here

Perhaps because it doesn't exactly do news covers, at least not literally so, The New Yorker's covers seem to respond to the emotional side well. its oblique approach to the Twin Towers increasing the design impact. Although in the first couple of weeks of response to the attacks ten years ago it was the shock of the news which largely prevailed, such covers as the Village Voice's postcard cover at the time also got at the sense of loss – not of simple real estate (the buildings themselves), or necessarily even of lives (that's a given, which is usually and understandably avoided explicitly on a cover), but in the everyday sense of identity: personal, citywide, countrywide.

Ten years after, I'm not sure exactly what TIME – usually so clever with cover ideas – wanted to achieve with their anniversary cover. In the New York Times (which writes about the various anniversary covers) TIME's managing editor says “I wanted something that was uplifting, that was more optimistic. Something that literally and figuratively moved beyond 9/11.”And he added a good point: “The anniversary is going to be ubiquitous, and that’s why you can stray from the usual images.” Nevertheless, this design seems to me to have gone way over the top, ending up almost cheesy, or perhaps an expression in line with the sudden dominance (even Dominion) of religion in U.S. political jockeying. TIME's dedicated issue may be interesting overall, but the cover seems almost Spielbergian.

In contrast, talking about about its more subtle cover – which comes from a different editorial remit and intent, so I'm not really comparing like with like – The New Yorker's art editor Françoise Mouly says in the same NYT article, “The image is quite somber, but there are lights. We wanted to look back and look forward. This image, I felt, was poised just at that cusp moment where it’s also positing a future.”

The excellent magazine-cover blog NASCAPAS also features a few covers (not grouped together, but posted around the anniversary time) including two versions of The Sunday Times magazine cover, which broaches the subject of the 200 or so who jumped/fell from the towers - either of which are impressive designs.

Ten years on, the Twin Towers dominate, naturally. It's the clear image of the day, and most of the covers go for the iconic – they are designs for the anniversary not necessarily for a review of what has happened following the attacks during the past ten years. So, despite it being a decade of war since the attacks, the Pentagon doesn't feature anywhere, nor are there any montages of iconic or explanatory shots to cover the events since. These are anniversary, cover images: symbols. Content – I hope – is inside, along with analysis.

Main image above, my shot of the WTC using an old, fixed-focus (more non-focused), light-leaking Russian panoramic camera I used to have.

Advertising by association

The complex relationship between reality and promotion, when advertising gets close to real world-events, is skirted in a recent ad promoting a publishing company.

Takarajimasha – the publisher concerned – printed the ad on Sept 2 in various publications. The ad (above) consists of a photograph of Gen. MacArthur arriving, post-war, at Atsugi airbase, ready to "rebuild" Japan, with catch copy saying: "Let's make a great country, however many times it takes" while the company's name appears small at bottom right. And that's all.

Of course, the deliberate thought-provoking/offensive (take your pick) link is two- or three-fold: was it MacArthur who made the new Japan great; is Japan at an equivalent place, post-the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, as it was post-WWII; should a company promote itself, however clearly/obliquely, above or alongside the rebuilding after a national disaster? Perhaps it includes, do we want to promote a different, "new", even foreign-oriented Japan, in the light of the disaster?

(Apparently, trending on Twitter was critic Machiyama Tomohiro opinion: "I don't think they put much thought into it. They're a company of idiots." While New York Times Tokyo-based reporter Hiroko Tabuchi tweeted, "Think it's an interesting ad, a real snub at Japan's postwar political leadership. Provocative, cynical, in some ways brilliant.")

One thing for sure, I didn't specifically know of this company before this ad (though I'd seen their magazines), so it worked on that level. And the company likes a simple, questioning, "thought-provoking" ads: last year it went with a photo of two dogs and the question "Can a Japanese dog and an American dog talk to each other?"

This one reminds me of Apple's promotion a few years ago – as part of its "Think Different" series which used famous (mostly dead) people to promote Apple via their own unconnected achievements – Apple just wanted to be associated with them. Einstein was an obvious one. Whether, especially posthumously, a person should be promoting your company via an unconnected association is sometimes iffy. The question was brought to the fore by Apple's "honoring" of Rosa Parks (below) – the black woman who refused to sit at the back of the bus in civil-rights era America – just days after she'd died in 2005. (She'd agreed while alive to be part of the campaign and Apple revisited her image immediately on her death.) Apple associated itself with civil rights, free-thinking – and heroism. As for the latter, in reality, of course, Apple is just a business, not heroic.

Has Takarajimasha overstepped a somewhat similar mark here, linking itself to a nation rebuilding and, in this case, using disaster to promote itself as strong? Or is it just some advertorial fun and a legitimate way of promoting yourself alongside a spirited Japan? Or is coupling your company with a questionable link to defeat in war not the bright way to go? Or is the company neatly linking itself with free-thinking (their own "think different"?) by deliberately courting advertising "controversy" and even making, as Tabuchi said, a political point?

Perhaps, on the whole, advertising on safer ground when it steers clear of the real-world, and we can all treat it as the effervescence it, at least usually, mostly is. Though advertisers may think differently.

Covers with character

Culture magazine Pen had Ultraman UV-coated on a single-colour black background. One thing characters often make for is a cool cover. This looks better in the "flesh" because of the coat etc. Meanwhile, this month art magazine Geijutsu Shincho explores "Cute Japan" via Hello Kitty (with slightly clashing pink and red. Ultraman wins the cool over kawaii race in my humble opinion).

Sorry

I guess prostrating yourself in an extreme form of apology (dogeza) can be seen as particularly Japanese – as would be making a keitai-strap figure of the same. When combined with the figures' availability from street-side or in-shop toy dispensers, the triple combination means that perhaps you can't get much more "Japanese". There is one strap that was rumoured to resemble the boss of Tepco – or at least it just came out as Tepco found themsleves dealing with the problems of the Fukushima plant – but I've yet to come across one of those. These are merely beach- or surfing-themed apologists from the same company, Zariganiworks. Complete with miserably apologetic faces…