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

Awekeys RGB Neon gives metal keycaps two ways to light up

October 18

Metal keycaps bring a distinctive look to a desk, but opaque surfaces can block the keyboard lighting that’s meant to illuminate the lettering.

Read at Yanko Design ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Awekeys RGB Neon gives metal keycaps two ways to light up

More from Yanko Design on Hakken

This Titanium-Coated Whiskey Glass Has an Aurora-Inspired Finish Yanko Design

Ato’s Radio-Inspired AI Assistant Trades Touchscreens for a Button and Knob Yanko Design

TUFF Pencil Cabinet Brings Volcanic-Rock Inspiration to Storage on Wheels Yanko Design

Pandora Lamp Reveals a Hidden Glow Through Perforated Steel Yanko Design

The 26-Foot eVista XL Tiny Home Skips the Loft for a Private Bedroom Yanko Design

Arc’s Bracelet Concept Quietly Nudges You to Stop Scrolling Yanko Design