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

Packaging Europe

Solidus launches Futurline Heat&Eat: fibre-based MAP trays for microwave, oven and air fryer use

11.02

Solidus is introducing Futurline Heat&Eat, a new trademark for its range of fibre-based modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) trays designed for ready meals that can be heated directly in a microwave…

Read at Packaging Europe ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Solidus launches Futurline Heat&Eat: fibre-based MAP trays for microwave, oven and air fryer use

More from Packaging Europe on Hakken

Veolia to purify captured and stored CO2 at waste-to-energy facility Packaging Europe

Why PET innovation also demands adhesive innovation Packaging Europe

Finalist Interview: Z1RO’s moulded fibre packaging from non-wood biomass Packaging Europe

Recycled PET bottle and 50% PCR stretch sleeve target circularity Packaging Europe

Edible seaweed ginger shot pods piloted by Innocent Drinks and Notpla Packaging Europe

Enviu’s reusable wine bottles sold in Netherlands supermarkets Packaging Europe