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

Your Old Barbie Dolls Actually Become Speakers and Power Banks

September 30

When I was young, a lot of my stuff was pink. Not just any pink. It had to be Barbie pink. I eventually grew into other colors, but those bright, familiar shades never lost their hold on me.

Read at Yanko Design ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

Latest

Your Old Barbie Dolls Actually Become Speakers and Power Banks

More from Yanko Design on Hakken

8 Digital Nomad Gear Picks That Fit in One Carry-On Yanko Design

A Round Clock That Shows the Forecast So You Stop Checking Your Phone Yanko Design

New Balance Quietly Fixed What Makes Tech Sneakers Unwearable Yanko Design

Logitech built the all-day work + play headset that doesn’t scream “IT department” Yanko Design

Poclink Motion Ultra is a modern walkie-talkie with LTE, GPS, SOS, and Zero Monthly Fees Yanko Design

The Perfect ‘Frequent Flyer’ Hoodie cradles your arms like a Straightjacket for comfortable snoozing Yanko Design