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

The Ultimate Scandinavian Summer Round-Up

07.31

Dearest friends, It's time for me to head off on my summer vacation for a couple of weeks. But I'd never leave you high and dry without plenty of beautiful Scandinavian summer inspiration!

Summer cottage

Read at My Scandinavian Home ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

The Ultimate Scandinavian Summer Round-Up

More from My Scandinavian Home on Hakken

One of my favourite trips of the year is almost here! My Scandinavian Home

A Magical Theatre Home on the Danish Island of Møn My Scandinavian Home

A Light & Lovely Malmö Home to Brighten Your Day My Scandinavian Home

An Idyllic 18th-Century Swedish Farm Summer Oasis My Scandinavian Home

Inside a Magical Swedish Summer Retreat My Scandinavian Home

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