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

Design Week

The Chase’s co-founder Ben Casey steps back as Squad’s founders take the reins

September 22

Manchester creative consultancy The Chase has new leadership, as it joins forces with two complementary businesses in a move to expand its offer and plan for succession.

Read at Design Week ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

The Chase’s co-founder Ben Casey steps back as Squad’s founders take the reins

More from Design Week on Hakken

Rock, paper, scissors: Why paper is the ultimate luxury technology Design Week

The Outline: Tartan reimagined, Guinness’ toucan, and a new inhaler – 21/09/2026 Design Week

Originality is overrated. Elaboration is the thing. Design Week

Psychedelics Design Online Conference returns for 2026 Design Week

Greenspace crafts brand identity for Philip Webb-designed One Palace Green Design Week

London Packaging Week Innovation Awards 2026 Winners Named Design Week