2015.08.31

The 17th Yusaku Kamekura Award: selection process and exhibitions

Awarded Work
Posters for exhibition at design event “HOKUSAI_LINE” (cl: Tokyo Design Week)
Award Winner
Kenjiro Sano

Publication: “Graphic Design in Japan 2015”（June 2015）
Award Ceremony: JAGDA General Assembly 2015 on 26 June 2015 at International House of Japan
Exhibitions:
Tuesday 3 March to Thursday 2 April 2015 at Creation Gallery G8
Autumn 2015 at 2F Gallery, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

kameawardexh_tokyo_poster2015

Selection Process of the 17th Yusaku Kamekura Design Award
The Yusaku Kamekura Design Award was established in 1999 to commemorate the achievements of Yusaku Kamekura, JAGDA’s first president, and to contribute to the ongoing development of graphic design. The award was made possible through a generous donation from Mr. Kamekura’s family. It is presented each year to the work judged most outstanding among all entries in the JAGDA Annual, regardless of category.

Preliminary nominations for the award were made in December 2014 by the 28 members of the JAGDA Annual Screening Committee. Their selections were made from among the 2,417 works entered in the competition to be included in the 2015 edition of the JAGDA Annual: Graphic Design in Japan.
To begin, the Committee extracted 56 entries that garnered the highest numbers of votes. In line with the selection rules, 21 works by ten designers who had previously received the award were eliminated, leaving a total of 35 works by 20 finalists.
The final selection was conducted on December 18, 2014 by the eleven members of the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Selection Committee. Designers having multiple preliminary nominations were ultimately nominated for the work, or series of works on the same theme, selected by majority vote by the Selection Committee. Once the final 20 nominations were decided, the voting took place anonymously with each member of the Selection Committee having the right to cast up to three votes. The three works that received the most votes (five or more) – by Rikako Nagashima, Kenjiro Sano and Yoshie Watanabe – were designated as the finalists. A final vote was then taken, and Kenjiro Sano won with nine votes.
The award-winning work is a poster titled “HOKUSAI_LINE” that Mr. Sano originally created for the “Hokusai Manga Inspired Exhibition” convened in conjunction with Tokyo Designers Week 2014, which featured works by 53 creative artists. The Selection Committee praised Mr. Sano’s poster for the completely new side of the designer it revealed and for its finely detailed and strangely appealing mode of expression.

Selection Committee Members:
Kazumasa Nagai (chairman), Katsumi Asaba, Kenya Hara, Mitsuo Katsui, Shin Matsunaga, Masayoshi Nakajo, Koichi Sato, Taku Satoh, Kiyonori Muroga (editor-in-chief of “IDEA” magazine)*, Nisuke Shimotani (illustrator)*, Shigeru Uchida (interior designer)*
*Special Committee Members

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