Mori Chack, the famous Japanese Artist/Graphic designer is the creator of the well known Gloomy Bear character. The Gloomy Bear is a 6-7 foot tall purple and pink bear that likes to eat and maul humans. This cute bear is often seen blood stained which represents Mori’s depiction of the inability for humans to be with animals.
In January of 2009, Japan lost one its most talented graphic designers with the passing of Shigeo Fukuda. An artist who worker in many mediums including graphic design and sculpture, Fukuda was especially gifted at crafting optical illusions and deceptively playing incredible tricks on the eye. One of his most renowned pieces titled “Lunch With a Helmet On” was a sculpture fashioned completely from table utensils which castes an intricate shadow resembling a motorcycle.
Born into a Japanese toy making family, Fukuda came to nurture a love of Swiss Style minimalism in the field of graphic design. Taking a degree from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in the mid-1950’s, he went on to create a body of work which was both beautiful and minimally simple. He had a true genius for boiling down complex imagery into fascinating and basic logo type images.
Commercially, he was responsible for the creation of the renowned 1970 World’s Fair poster which was used as the official advertising of the Osaka based fair. American collectors may know him best for the iconic clenched fist wrapped in barbed wire symbol which he created as a logo for the organization Amnesty International.
Other notable Fukuda works include the striking Victory 45 poster which literally forces the viewer to stare down the barrel of a canon as well as several beloved designs for Earth Day posters. There is little doubt that Fukuda ha d real knack for communicating massively complex ideas through deceptively simple imagery. Even his personal home reflected his love of illusion featuring a 4 foot high false door which appeared far away as one approached the house while the actual front door was an unadorned panel which was designed to appear to be part of on e of the house’s walls.
Japan has often struggled with a need to reconcile its love of futuristic technology, western Pop Culture, and ancient Japanese customs and traditions. This struggle takes many forms, some of them beautiful, some ugly, and some downright sinister.
One artist was able to create visual representations of this struggle better than almost any of his contemporaries. That artist was the graphic designer Ikko Tanaka. Tanaka had an unrivaled gift for melding images of the mythical past with flourishes of the Westward looking future
The logos for Tsukuba’s Expo ’85 and World City Expo Tokyo ’96 were both Tanaka creations. He also did some captivating work for the Seibu Saison Group, The International Garden and Greenery Expo, fashion mavens Hanae Mori and Issey Miyake, and Mazda Corporation. His work has even been officially exhibited at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and in various locations around Japan.
Perhaps his most enduring legacy in the field of consumer culture is his co-creation alongside Kazuko Koike and Takashi Sugimoto, of the design of Japan’s beloved and brandless Muji department stores. He spent most of the later part of his life and career devoted to the Muji as the company’s art director until 2001.
One of the leading lights of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century’s Japanese graphic design scene is Tadanori Yokoo. Born in 1936, this prolific artistic genius has been involved in a wide range of mediums and artistic endeavors. His early works stand as some of the finest examples of Japanese pop art, and his output continues even to this day as he explores new paths of expression.
Yokoo first made his mark in the world of the avant garde theater scene in Tokyo. His designs from this era exhibit a whole host of influences drawn from Japan and the United States. Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast’s New York-based Pushpin Theater are among some of the clearest influences. Japanese filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa is another. Yokoo himself names Kurosawa and author Yukio Mishima as his 2 strongest influences.
As the late 1960’s rolled on Yokoo’s imagination turned to the mystical and psychedelic spirit which was flourishing around the world. He gained an especially keen interest in the mysticism after extensive travels in India. His body of work clearly taps into the moods and styles of the pop culture of the 1960’s and for this reason he has been inaccurately labeled the Japanese Andy Warhol, or the Asian Peter Max. Those who take a deeper look at his work though, will tell you it is much more intricate and enigmatic than most of the art produced by those two American artists. Yokoo’s designs reflect more emotion and intensity. They use the language of the plastic artificiality of the 1960’s pop art scene but they channel it into something much less superficial more personal.
In the early 1980’s, Yokoo abruptly took leave of the pop art style he used to so much success and went in a whole new direction. He no longer worked commercially and instead decided to try his hand at painting. Today, he continues to paint and to exhibit his fine art work in galleries and shows every year. In addition to this he also continues to produce an impressive output of graphic art and design work as well.