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

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Week 37, 2026 — Craft & material

Week 37, 2026. Craft & material was the signal of the week.

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Week 37, 2026 — Craft & material

Stories that week

Autodesk's Aishwarya Balamukundan on Judging Core77's Fusion Forward Competition Core77

Americans Invent Yet Another Crazy-Ass Racing Style: "King of the Hill" Core77

Oilstainlab's Automotive-Inspired Maniac Chair Core77

The Bulldog Binder: Improving the Design of the Ratchet Binder Core77

Izzy Swan Revolutionizes Workbench Hold-Down Core77

Flip: Flexible, Flippable Modular Public Seating Core77

Experimental Linkage-Based Clocks Core77

Handsome, Utilitarian Pop-Up Furniture by Industrial Designer Tom Ducarouge Core77

ShiftLens: A System for 3D-Printing Lenticular Objects Core77

Core77 Weekly Roundup (8-31-26 to 9-4-26) Core77

Clever Improvisation: How to Keep Your Car Going on Just Three Wheels Core77

The James Brand's Handsome, Designey Alternative to the Swiss Army Knife Core77

Latest

Week 37, 2026 — Craft & material

Stories that week

Autodesk's Aishwarya Balamukundan on Judging Core77's Fusion Forward Competition Core77

Americans Invent Yet Another Crazy-Ass Racing Style: "King of the Hill" Core77

Oilstainlab's Automotive-Inspired Maniac Chair Core77

The Bulldog Binder: Improving the Design of the Ratchet Binder Core77

Izzy Swan Revolutionizes Workbench Hold-Down Core77

Flip: Flexible, Flippable&nbsp;Modular Public Seating Core77

Experimental Linkage-Based Clocks Core77

Handsome, Utilitarian Pop-Up Furniture by Industrial Designer Tom Ducarouge Core77

ShiftLens: A System for 3D-Printing Lenticular Objects Core77

Core77 Weekly Roundup (8-31-26 to 9-4-26) Core77

Clever Improvisation: How to Keep Your Car Going on Just Three Wheels Core77

The James Brand's Handsome, Designey Alternative to the Swiss Army Knife Core77

Flip: Flexible, Flippable Modular Public Seating Core77