Daijiro Mizuno

Writer; Editor; Educator / Japan /

www.daijirom.com

Daijiro Mizuno’s Notable Books of 2012

all genres

title a–z

8 books

15 Years of Media Arts

Add to My Reading List

Kurando Furuya Editor

This book celebrates the last 15 years of media arts in Japan. In 1997 the first Japan Media Arts Festival was first held, sponsored by the Council of Cultural Affairs in Japan. Since that time the festival has been held on an annual basis to encourage the further developments of media arts. Over the past 15 years situations surrounding media have changed significantly; this book should be read as a testimony, or a continuing negotiation of those who work in the fields of anime, manga, games, moving images, the Internet, and mixed media arts.

メディア芸術祭とは、文化庁メディア芸術祭実行委員会が主催しているメディアアートの祭典。メディア芸術の創造とその発展を図ることを目的に1997年から毎年実施されている。この15年間で、メディアをとりまく状況は劇的に変化した。作品を振り返ることは、社会の変化に対しての芸術家たちによる交渉を再読することでもあろう。メディアアート/アニメ/マンガ/ゲーム/映像/インターネットの６つのカテゴリーから、１５年間にわたるメディアアートの進化を紹介。

Girls’ Fashion in Japanese Manga

Add to My Reading List

Mana Takemura

Japanese manga has been a subject of critical inquiry, or a subject of desire, for many male scholars, including Hiroki Azuma. However, there have been hardly any books on girls’ fashion in manga from the female perspective. Characters appearing in manga dress themselves to construct a narrative (reminding me of what Walter. J. Ong argued in relation to “orality”) about themselves. Are manga illustrators just as creative as fashion designers? This book introduces the relationship between characters and fashion to provide a unique perspective on girls’ manga and fashion design.

マンガはこれまでにも東浩紀や大塚英志ら男性の研究者によって、分析の、あるいは欲望の対象となってきた。しかし、マンガのキャラクター、特に少女のファッションに焦点をあてて、女性の立場から紹介されたものは少ない。物語の中でキャラクターが着る服は、キャラクターを構成し物語をわかりやすくする重要な要素になっている。キャラクターとファッションの関係性などを紹介しつつ、少女マンガとファッションデザインについて考えることができる楽しい一冊である。

Ikko Tanaka and the Future/Past/East/West of Design

Add to My Reading List

Kazuko Koike

Ikko Tanaka was a graphic designer and a founding member/art director of MUJI. 21_21 Design Sight, a design museum in Tokyo, organized an exhibition to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of his death. This book serves as an exhibition catalogue with contributors including Tadao Ando reevaluating Tanaka’s achievements in design.

Japan Japanese

Add to My Reading List

Helmut Schmid

Helmut Schmid is a graphic designer born in Austria in 1942. Currently Schmid lives in Japan and continues to work vigorously. Without question, his book Typography Today, released in 1980, is one of the most significant contributions to the development of typographic design in the last few decades, but Japan Japanese is also a unique book, which revisits Schmid’s early work (1968–73) on the Swiss typography and photography magazine Typografische Monatsblätter. As a look at the precursors to the contents of Typography Today, this book offers a visual historiography of contemporary typography.

ヘルムート・シュミットはオーストリア生まれ(1942)のグラフィックデザイナー・タイポグラファーである。現在、大阪に在住しながら勢力的に活動を展開し、日本では大塚製薬「ポカリスエット」、資生堂「ELIXIR」、「IPSA」のロゴデザインを手掛けたことでも知られるが、1980年に発表された書籍TYPOGRAPHY TODAYこそが重要な一冊であり、それに至るまでの文脈理解こそが今学ばれるべきだろう。この意味のいて、 japan japaneseはスイスのティポグラフィシェ・モナーツブレッテル(TM)誌に連載（1968年1月～1973年3月）した内容をまとめた大変資料価値の高い一冊である。

Katsuji Wakisaka: Japanese Textile Designer

Add to My Reading List

Katsuji Wakisaka

A biography of a Japanese textile designer who worked for prominent textile design firms such as Marimekko and Larsen. After working over 40 years as a textile print designer, Wakisaka currently designs for SOUSOU, a fashion brand based in Kyoto. This book is a full of inspirational sources—over 10,000 of them—celebrating Wakisaka’s long and successful career.

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

Add to My Reading List

Chris Anderson

In November 2012, MUJI held an exhibition entitled “Patterns of Furniture in Tokyo” and last year Droog mounted the exhibition “Design for Download” in Milan. Why are these design firms sharing and selling digital data? Because digital manufacturing (digital fabrication) is changing the role and meaning of design and designers. Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of Free and The Long Tail, introduces the Maker Movement, the rise of a new kind of DIY through digital fabrication; how 3D printers, 3D scanners, Computer Numerical Control Cutting Machines, and laser cutters can democratize the way we design, make, share, and sell things. Makers sketches the future of design.

Photo Gallery of Good Buildings: West

Add to My Reading List

Building Mania Cafe

While Japan in the 1950s to the 1970s was under the strong influence of the United States, Japanese architects and designers developed new movements like Metabolism and Anonymous Design to visualize the their future. Osaka, as a host city of World Expo 1970, is still filled with various “modernistic” buildings. This book revisits those old futuristic buildings and reintroduces its design details. Fun to read as inspirational design source, cultural anthropology, or architectural history.

Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey (Japanese edition)

Add to My Reading List

Tony Brook

Adrian Shaughnessy

It goes without saying that Wim Crouwel is one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century. This book—a Japanese edition of the London Design Museum exhibition catalogue originally published by Unit Editions* and now out of print—celebrates more than 60 years of Crouwel’s designs, including his rigorous grid system, typographic designs such as the New Alphabet, and museum exhibitions.

*A digital version of the catalogue for iPad, with enhanced content such as a video interview with Crouwel, has been produced this year by Unit Editions.