公益社団法人 日本グラフィックデザイナー協会 JAGDA

Selection Process of the 12th 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 yearbook, regardless of category.

Preliminary nominations for the award were made in December 2009 by the 26 members of the JAGDA Annual Screening Committee. Their selections were made from among the 2,776 works that passed preliminary screening for the 2010 edition of the JAGDA Annual: Graphic Design in Japan. The Committee extracted 35 entries that garnered the highest numbers of votes: 9.1 or more. (Because the borderline number of votes needed for inclusion differed for each category, the posters category, which had the largest number of entries, was used as the standard and scores were computer-adjusted accordingly.) In line with selection rules, 12 works by seven designers who had previously received the award (Ryosuke Uehara, Kashiwa Sato, Taku Satoh, Masayoshi Nakajo, Kazunari Hattori, Kenya Hara and Shin Matsunaga) were eliminated, leaving a total of 23 works by 17 finalists (18 designers). The Committee then selected one work for each finalist, narrowing the field to 17.
The final selection was conducted on December 15, 2009, by the 10 members of the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Selection Committee. Each member had the right to cast up to three votes, and the voting took place anonymously. Before the voting began, a question was raised concerning the propriety of including a work partially created by a former award-winner (Ryosuke Uehara). The members decided to proceed with the voting and pass judgment on the matter after seeing the results.
Those results showed the posters by Katsumi Asaba garnering a full count of 10 votes. The Committee members decided unanimously to confer the 12th Yusaku Kamekura Design Award on Katsumi Asaba. Although the posters depict the design philosophy of Misawa Homes, they were deemed worthy of the award for their theme and power of execution.

Members of Selection Committee
Yusaku Kamekura Award Board of Directors: Kazufumi Nagai [chairman], Masuteru Aoba, Mitsuo Katsui, Koichi Sato, Taku Satoh, Masayoshi Nakajo, Shin Matsunaga, Kenya Hara

Special Committee Members
Shoji Katagishi, Naoto Fukazawa

（text by Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Office）