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Kenya Hara on “Designing Design”

Design Leadership
Dec 08, 2008
5 Comments






As part of Google’s Authors@Google, Kenya Hara discusses his awesome book “Designing Design” and his new book “White”. Warning, it runs for 53 mins and is about 78 MB!

If you have not already get the book here on Amazon:

Designing Design – Kenya Hara

Designer Kenya Hara visits Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book “Designing Design.” This event took place on September 29, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he impresses upon the reader the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work: Hara for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998.

In 2001, he enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably molded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since. Kenya Hara, alongside Naoto Fukasawa one of the leading design personalities in Japan, has also called attention to himself with exhibitions such as “Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century” of 2000.

Kenya Hara (born 1958) is a graphic designer, Professor at the Art University Musashino and communication advisor for MUJI.

Shared by the ever awesome Aen, the web designer behind the design of this site. Thanks man!





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  • Comments

    normal bookmark
    Dec 09, 08 – 1:47 am

    You know what? I tried to write a transcript of the 53 minute video and I gave up after 5 minutes. Even though I had a few Japanese co-workers, my ears, typing and patience just wasn’t up for it. So I left my text editor with “emptiness”. :P

    By the way I saw this book for sale in Kinokuniya (Ngee Ann City). If you are in Singapore you might want to search their BookWeb.

    I finished reading a copy I borrowed from the library. It’s really good stuff.

    js
    Dec 09, 08 – 1:55 pm

    i’ll be getting this book for myself for christmas.

    DT
    Dec 09, 08 – 9:25 pm

    @Aen (aka normal bookmark) I am amazed you even tried! His English is not the best, but it does take a while to get into a flow with his accent. If you really plan to do a transcript I suggest you watch it all the way through once before your scribe it. Yes I saw about 5 copies at Kino but it is over $88 per book! Too much.

    @js, if you can do it, I think it is worth it!

    normal bookmark
    Dec 13, 08 – 2:16 am

    Oh yea I finished the whole video. But I gave up on the transcribing. $88 isn’t so bad. It’s thick and has a lot of content. I recently bought “Super Normal” by Naoto Fukasawa at $80+ also, essentially a picture book but I felt Hara’s book a bit more enjoyable.

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