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 Archive

My Scandinavian Home

An Autumn Escape to a Beautiful 1910 Stockholm Villa

October 2

Hello October! I’ve always loved this month. There’s still a mildness in the air, the leaves are gently turning deep yellow and vibrant red, and the light is still here, although quieter – which…

Heritage & nostalgia airbnb swedish home

Read at My Scandinavian Home ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

An Autumn Escape to a Beautiful 1910 Stockholm Villa

Related

A Home Filled with Art, Vintage Finds and Heart My Scandinavian Home

The 1969 Lamp Nobody Knew They Needed Is Back Yanko Design

Horah Inc lets its love for Pokémon and typography soar in identities for spiced rum, trading cards and book design It's Nice That

Four handcrafted ceramic vessels in a mirror-silver anniversary box Mindsparkle Mag

Atelier HA designs MELT’s new Panthéon restaurant in Paris Icon

Steven Heller’s Font of the Month: Ege Basalt I Love Typography