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

Yanko Design

Arrowspace’s $119 screwdriver identifies screws and lights up the matching bit

10.28

For five years, Arrowmax has been teaching screwdrivers to read people. The SES Pro in 2021 watched your wrist, so a twist left or right told the motor which way to spin.

Read at Yanko Design ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Arrowspace’s $119 screwdriver identifies screws and lights up the matching bit

More from Yanko Design on Hakken

Do yourself a favor and buy a power station now, before the energy crisis gets worse Yanko Design

This 484-Square-Foot Tiny Home Fits Two Bedrooms Without a Loft Yanko Design

The Auk Mini 2 brings your grocery store’s herb aisle to your kitchen counter (with zero human effort) Yanko Design

Apple’s new M6 iMac is faster, not different Yanko Design

Apple just launched a MacBook Pro 24-hours before its MacBook Pro event Yanko Design

Flora’s Wooden Chess Set Is Actually Shaped for Your Fingers Yanko Design