Japanese Industrial Design: Josef Müller-Brockmann

Yamaha 250 Model YDS2 SportsType. Poster. Graphic Design: Kitai Saburo
The rapid recovery of Japanese economy and industry after the second world war and the colossal economic developments of the succeeding years have put Japan at the head of production in the Far East. This has bean accompanied by intensive grand-scale activity in the field of publicity. The technique and the methods applied by the Japanese in advertisements, posters, diapositives, neon-lettering and images, in films and exhibitions, etc., have been derived from American example and the whole sphere of publicity has been developed to such an extant that today there exist many specialist schools, some of them privately run, which are attempting to fill that growing demand for graphic designers.
For some years now Japanese publicity has revealed the unmistakable influence of European ideas, above all those of the Bauhaus and the work of its masters, the achievements of the pioneers of graphic design, typography and photography, and the work of contemporary progressive graphic designers and creative artists (especially that of Italian and Swiss designers) and present-day progressive methods of training are discussed and analysed in detail in Japanese specialist books and periodicals as well as in exhibitions.
A decisive contribution to the understanding of European problems of design in Japan has been made in numerous articles by Masaru Katzusie, editor of the periodical "Graphic Design" and collaborator in various publications on graphic design, photography, design and architecture through his enthusiasm. He has repeatedly drawn attention in articles and lectures to the importance of "New Graphic Design" as a source of information for new planning and designing in the field of factual, objective publicity. It is remarkable how greatly “New Graphic Design" is discussed and valued as a touchstone of contemporary design not only by leading designers and advertising specialists but also by the talented and up-coming young.
During a stay of several months In Japan in 1961 the present writer gained much conclusive insight into thought and ideas of Japanese artists and designers. While teaching young students and adults specialising in design at day schools and village schools In Tokyo and Osaka he became convinced of the astonishing talent of the people, the inheritance of a unique culture which had endured for more than a thousand years. The sensibility of the Japanese to values of form and colour, their intelligence and proverbial industry as well as their intuitive grasp of formal relations and methods are a continual surprise. They make use of the photographic image and assess its possibilities as a means of expression with almost uncanny ease. They have followed European example in applying geometric and constructive images to advertising, often using them wrongly to be sure, in their enthusiasm at having discovered them.
Many leading Japanese graphic designers attempt to integrate lettering in the design, a few try to control the typography by means of a modulus. Here they are struggling with the problem of three different kinds of lettering which are all essential to the Japanese language, Katakana, Hirakana and the Chinese Kanji phonetic script. All three kinds of script are mostly required in the same text, for each has various meanings which cannot be expressed by the others. In addition to this, western names at ideas which cannot be expressed in any of the above mentioned scripts, are written in arabic letters. The mixture of these three or four kinds of script, differing in the shape and thickness of the letters, greatly disturbs if it does not altogether prohibit the unity of the typographic image. Japanese designers are aware of this difficulty and try to overcome it by a tighter and more carefully proportioned arrangement of the typographical areas, by imparting tension to the picture area or by resorting to a visually striking typographical image — relationships and considerations which have only been made possible to them by European example.
Japanese graphic design is still young and correspondingly varied and tentative, it is nevertheless possible to make some assessment of its aims, tendencies and formal methods.
a) Publicity making use of drawing, illustrative, playful, naturalistic, uncomplicated, primitive, with free lettering.
b) Publicity using drawing, but emphasizing style and formal qualities and introducing colour only as a considered element limited to the minimum.
Tendencies:
1. Objective, factual, constructive tendencies.
2. Subjective, imaginative; images depending on unexpected effects and emphasizing the aesthetic aspect.
3. Reliance on geometric, mathematical, proportioned images.
There is same attempt to relate the typography visually and formally to the drawn work.
c) Publicity incorporating photography.
Tendencies:
1. Factual advertising with no aesthetic considerations and corresponding typography, aiming at a mass effect: objective and informative.
2. Factual, objective, informative publicity with photography used aesthetically.
3. Photography used to create strange, unexpected images; not factual.
4. Photography with sex appeal: not factual or informative; uncomplicated, without aesthetic interest.
5. Photography which is experimental in form and colour, emphatically aesthetic, often used in prestige advertising.
6. Photography used as an expressively effective, aggressively realistic, dynamic visual document.
7. Photography used to create atmosphere.
d) Publicity in which the image is ordered on emphatically constructivist lines.
Tendencies:
1. Publicity using elements of geometry and proportion.
2. Publicity using typographical elements ordered according to a modulus and with tension resulting from the contrast of negative and positive elements in the arrangements of the surface area.
3. Publicity using factual photography to portray an actual process, the typography having been formally and objectively related to the photography. The examples of Japanese graphic design shown here represent a cross-section of the attempts of serious designers to achieve an informative, factual expression of the publicity purpose with means which are formally convincing.
Published in Neue Grafik / New Graphic Design / Graphisme actuel Nr. 17/18, 1965.