The city of Muko in Kyoto held an open contest for their 50th city anniversary and these two submitted designs were created and inspired from the meaning and etymology of the kanji 向(mu)日(ko).

The first was selected from more than 700 designs to be part of the 8 finalists for the citizens' vote.

Blacnk visually explores the sense of incomplete belonging. Living in Japan has accustomed me to ways of living and doing that can make me feel like a stranger in my own country when I return. As a non-Japanese citizen I will never completely belong here either. Hence, this exhibition tries to show this ambiguity through spaces I know but, at the same time, revealing them as unrecognizable. This paradoxical in-between state simultaneously procures me a strange feeling of fullness and emptiness.  

The digital prints possess black areas that might look artificially added onto the canvas, however, they are not; they follow the lines and contours from the original picture. Combined to the color scope of the prints, the black parts recall that paradox of being there, alive and not there, dead, concurrently knowing the surroundings and not knowing them. Furthermore, these black spaces also provide viewers an opportunity to create their own fictitious scenes within the pitch-dark color thus offering a possible distance reduction between them and the work.

Captions – sort of protruding holes– evoke multifaceted language cohabitation. The boxes’ front face paintings, however, take root in kanji etymology and are an expression of knowledge transferred to artistic movements. Consequently, this Japanese language appropriation depicts imperfection and mysterious painterly concepts.

Fukuko Okamura, Clothes designer, Identity Design

Many design avenues were explored to create this logo identity. However, the Japanese character 福 fuku in Mrs. Okamura’s first name and expressing «good fortune» wore a special meaning for her. Thus, the designer used the origins of that character for inspiration. Hereafter, the etymology* of the fuku character in a nutshell: the nine strokes on the right (畐) of the character depict a baggy container holding alcohol, which was offered to the gods; on the left (ネ) is a simplified depiction of a small altar on which the container probably stood during those ritual offerings in the olden China days. In turn, these offerings were believed to procure «happiness», «good fortune» and «help» to people, which are subsequent meanings of the 福 fuku character. Hence, the logo widens skyward as an offering recalling some of the character’s etymology. Moreover, as Mrs. Okamura creates light, feel-good garments made from natural silk fabric, the logo tries to embody lightness like an open flower would.

*Shirakawa, Shizuka. Joyojikai. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2003.

These silkscreen prints on wood & watercolor/black ink paintings are the "kanji" (written 漢字 - Japanese character) part of the exhibition. Conceptually it is the "constructed" part as opposed to the "instinctive" part "kanji" (written 感じ - feeling, instinct), which is the other half of the exhibition. 

This set of 8 triptychs was a three step process. Record dreams, reduce them to a brief poem and visually illustrate the poem.

Each verse, a triptych series, is composed of 3 visual components corresponding to the subject, verb and object. Accordingly, the first piece is a silkscreen print on wood acting as the subject, the second is the water-colour & black ink painting representing the verb and the third element is the object which is another silkscreen print on wood. The reasoning behind this conception is that, grammatically, we can interpret the verb as the element that moves thus the painting tries to express this through its very own water-colour and black ink organic characteristics. Moreover, at the exhibition, they were deliberately shown detached from the wall to feel their curvature, their movement. Secondly, the subject and object are grammatically considered here as static, hence a stable square shape and a stiff material: wood. 

Each element or art work is associated to a Japanese character (Kanji) from which the etymology interpretation was used to influenced its visual design development and representations. Kanji meaning and origins provide inspiration to the creative process and allows, to some extent, embodiment of knowledge in art and visual design.

The poem: 

Net floating in the sky,

body lying on mesh,

cityscape fascinates my eye,

I yearn the scenery.

Danger fills the air under

emptiness draws fear,

she blesses me with protection,

lightness appears in mind.

This is one half of the Kanji (感じ - feeling, instinct) part of the exhibition. The other being The Liquid Moment Series.

Movement is the base of our everyday life. Naturally we execute most of our movements with instinct. What happens to these automatisms when they are put to a brush-pen within a very restrained canvas? The Micro Movement Series explored this question in hundreds of tiny drawings made within a 1 x 1 cm or 3 x 3 cm canvas. Furthermore, by enlarging the drawings to a 40 x 40 cm canvas, this series reveals the randomness of the ink’s spreading which is unrecognizable to the naked eye. Works of this series are limited to 5 prints each.

The serigraphy and installation designs are an expression of Wabi Sabi. Leonard Koren's Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (1994) especially influenced the whole process and its final outputs (also see The Glass Series gallery). The three chosen concepts illustrated on the wall are "energy" (気), "hidden" (隠) and "tranquility"(静), which are concepts associated with this Japanese philosophy/aesthetic. These visual designs were developed with their respective character's etymology, which is explained in the caption below each of them. Moreover, they are examples of the three kind of ink diffusion trace techniques - called Taction - which are: "nijimi" 「滲み」(spreading), "kasure" 「掠れ」(touching lightly) and "bokashi" 「暈し」(gradation, shading off).

This sequence is inspired by 2 concepts: Leonard Koren's metaphysical view of Wabi Sabi and the origin of the 'emptiness' or 'nothingness' character - kuu 空. According to Koren, Wabi Sabi can be understood as: "Things are either devolving toward, or evolving from nothingness". On each glass plate is a painted "gel print" using spreading, touching lightly and seeping techniques. By looking through all the glass panels we see an expression of "nothingness" as well as an ascent and a descent through time/space.

On the bottom right of the layout photo there is a pedestal with the "Design with Taction" book which you can see in the project: Master's Graduation Works: Design with Taction Book.

This exhibition was the result of an assignment in the "Design and Expression" Class in the Graphic Design Dept. at Seika University. The theme, "Blind Spot", has two characters in Japanese - 盲点 - and is pronounced 'moten'. 

I used the parts - called radicals - of these two characters as triggers of inspiration for the creative process that ultimately led the photographic montage work called "Life is WOW". 

Intangibly, I interpreted the theme as life because we never really know what will happen next. Like an invisible moving object heading towards us with positive or negative energy, life hides an infinite quantities of surprises. From the get-go the desire to transmit depth and infinity was part of the plan.

By looking at the kanji and their parts we have: 

Blind: 盲：亡＋目. The first means "the deceased, the late, perish" and is a depiction of a human shape hidden behind a semi-transparent cloth or partition. From this I gathered the idea of the "see-through-barrier". The second part is a depiction of an eye, which long ago was written horizontally. Like the eye, with the white-color-white parts that character showed three parts (or a stack of three rectangles as we see it now). Thus, from the character " blind", with its parts I wanted to use an "eye-see-through-mesh" in the work. This became the 3D glasses that are needed to see some specific shapes in the montage.

Spot: 点：占＋火. The first part is the character used to represent fortune telling. It's seems that the Chinese, in the olden days, looked at cracks in tortoise shells to understand what the gods were saying. From this I took the "mysterious, mystic, unknown" idea. The second part, illustrated by 4 strokes at the bottom of the character "spot-点", represents fire (火). From this the use of warm color tones came about.

All these ideas are woven in the montage showing three Japanese Braille letters, which are "i", "no", "chi" meaning "life". They can be seen with 3D glasses as they sublely and inconspicuously pop out from the background horizon of the canvas. This mysterious message, as most people don't read braille, could be read by touching the three hiragana letters "i", "no", "chi" - written with hot glue and became embossed - behind the bottom right white panel.

Kihara Pharmacy, a family owned business, was looking for a new logo and a new brand name.

The first three proposals relate to their name "Kihara" and the developed designs are derived from the meaning and origins of the Japanese characters "Ki" (木 - tree) and "hara" (原 - source). These inspirations are tied in with the "K" shape, which would have given the name "K" or "ke-i" as pronounced in Japanese.

The next two "plus" sign proposals reflect a common street sign identity for  drugstore owners in Japan. However, I offered them variations relating to pill shapes. The name "Plus" would have been very positive as Japanese use this English word in their daily lives.

The last proposal was a derived variation of the pill shape blended with a modified version of a heavily used "emoticon" in Japanese phone communications. This mark also reflects, to some extent, the Japanese "kawaii" (cute) culture. 

For logistical & financial reasons, the owners never had a chance to buy and use a design but they were especially pleased with the last one. They thought it would have given them a chance to positively connect with young families of the neighbourhood, a consequence of recent residential developments of the surroundings.