社団法人 日本グラフィックデザイナー協会 JAGDA

Message from the awardee

From time to time I have a unilateral connection with Yusaku Kamekura. When I was in charge of the design of the publication celebrating the first 50 years of the Nippon Design Center, I had the opportunity to hear anecdotes about Kamekura, one of the NDC’s founding members, from people familiar with the events of those early days. Then several years ago, I had occasion to discuss Kamekura in a special feature on graphic design for the magazine Pen. In preparation I reread his book Ririku chakuriku (Takeoff and Landing) and got an appreciation of Kamekura not only as a designer who left a legacy of numerous masterpieces but also as a man of action. Most recently, in the course of my activities on JAGDA’s Public Relation Committee, I was moved seeing various impassioned writings by Kamekura to attract members to join the newly founded JAGDA. Through these encounters, I was left with a strong impression of Kamekura’s passionate stance, the way he continuously and consistently acted to win social recognition of the profession of graphic designer, and I came to hope that someday I too could become a designer capable of carrying on his ideas, even a little.
The CI plan of Osaka Metro, the work for which I have won this award, called for the creation of a sign and symbol to serve as infrastructure supporting Osaka, a huge international city, so the design’s function had to be clear even to people visiting the city for the first time. At the same time, imagining the sheer number of places where this sign would appear throughout the metropolis, I believed it also had to have an element of environmental design forming part of the urban landscape. Ultimately, my idea derived from my desire to respond to these needs with a special form achievable only with the theme of “Osaka’s Metro”: a three-dimensional “M” logo which, by changing the angle, becomes Osaka’s “O.” In these times when much has to be explained when creating a public design, I created a motion logo, for display on screens inside trains and train stations, also attempting to let the design speak visually for itself, eliminating words to the maximum extent possible. While I’m not entirely sure whether I was successful, from the information available the CI design seems generally to have been accepted favorably.
This was a project in which I felt great contact with society plus solid response to my efforts, and now, on top of that, to my immense pleasure I have received this award. Taking to heart the joy of this new encounter with Yusaku Kamekura, my hope now is to continue, in my own way, my pursuit of the profession of graphic designer.