発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

← Hakken 週ごとのアーカイブ

Design Observer

S13E2 DB|BD at Aspen: Judy Samuelson is Still Thinking About the Purpose of a Corporation

9月17日

If you’re in the business world, you’ve heard of Judy Samuelson. Even if you’re not in the business world, you may have heard of Judy Samuelson.

Design Observerで読む ↗

Design Observerの他の記事

Katie Conry on building public programming for San Francisco’s most historically rich — and most misunderstood — communities Design Observer

Brands cannot afford to speak in the same voice as countless others right now. Typeface designers can help. Design Observer

We’re joyfully receiving your feedback. Here’s where we’re headed: Design Observer

Design Observerの他の記事

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

S13E2 DB|BD at Aspen: Judy Samuelson is Still Thinking About the Purpose of a Corporation

Design Observerの他の記事

S13E1 DB|BD at Aspen: Todd Breyfogle on the Aspen Institute’s Humanistic History Design Observer

A Google UX researcher responded to digital fatigue by founding a newspaper Design Observer

Ira Blossom created a games-only, print-only newspaper — and it’s sold at a newsstand in New York City Design Observer

Katie Conry on building public programming for San Francisco’s most historically rich — and most misunderstood — communities Design Observer

Brands cannot afford to speak in the same voice as countless others right now. Typeface designers can help. Design Observer

We’re joyfully receiving your feedback. Here’s where we’re headed: Design Observer