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

Fast Company Design

Why Live Nation is going all-in on designing its own concert venues

10月21日

The entertainment company Live Nation has been promoting and running concerts in venues around the world for decades, bringing touring acts to whatever concert hall or amphitheater an artist could…

Fast Company Designで読む ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Why Live Nation is going all-in on designing its own concert venues

Fast Company Designの他の記事

Whole Foods used to be ‘Whole Paycheck.’ Now it’s the hottest home for affordable beauty Fast Company Design

This audio system combines vinyl, tape, and CDs with a sprinkle of Dieter Rams Fast Company Design

Overcoming personal branding’s biggest challenges: 148 ideas and insights to take control of how people think about you Fast Company Design

Stefan Sagmeister’s new shoe designs are actually walking infographics Fast Company Design

Why the grocery store of the future could have more mini cans and personal packs Fast Company Design

Arsenal’s new blackletter font is a tribute to a star player Fast Company Design