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

The Dieline

Tropical Smoothie Cafe’s JKR-Powered Rebrand Turns Palm Trees Into a Packaging Paradise

September 21

Tropical Smoothie Cafe’s rebrand brings a fresh sense of sunshine to every order, with a playful Palm T and a punchy green and orange palette transforming cups, wrappers, and bags.

Packaging Rebrand / refresh

Read at The Dieline ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Tropical Smoothie Cafe’s JKR-Powered Rebrand Turns Palm Trees Into a Packaging Paradise

Related

How one branding agency redesigned its website to reduce carbon emissions Fast Company Design

JapanWinners of Japan’s 2027 Packaging Design Awards Spoon & Tamago

INI | Fashion Visual Identity and Packaging Design Behance

Japan「日本パッケージデザイン大賞2027」結果発表！大賞は「大丸松坂屋百貨店ショッピングバッグ」 Japan Design Net

Mother Design rebrands psychic platform Keen Creative Review

London Packaging Week Innovation Awards 2026 Winners Named Design Week

Latest

Tropical Smoothie Cafe’s JKR-Powered Rebrand Turns Palm Trees Into a Packaging Paradise

Related

How one branding agency redesigned its website to reduce carbon emissions Fast Company Design

JapanWinners of Japan’s 2027 Packaging Design Awards Spoon & Tamago

INI | Fashion Visual Identity and Packaging Design Behance

Japan「日本パッケージデザイン大賞2027」結果発表！大賞は「大丸松坂屋百貨店 ショッピングバッグ」 Japan Design Net

Mother Design rebrands psychic platform Keen Creative Review

London Packaging Week Innovation Awards 2026 Winners Named Design Week

Japan「日本パッケージデザイン大賞2027」結果発表！大賞は「大丸松坂屋百貨店ショッピングバッグ」 Japan Design Net