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

← Hakken Archive

Abduzeedo

Montreal Architecture Brand Identity by Mariane Farias

October 9Work

Mariane Farias crafts a minimalist brand identity for Montreal Architecture, translating circular window facades into tactile yellow stationery. Montreal…

Craft & material

Read at Abduzeedo ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

Montreal Architecture Brand Identity by Mariane Farias

Related

Inside the Craft of Reserva: Typography Design by Plau Abduzeedo

How Brand Brothers Crafted Brand Identity for Glénat Abduzeedo

Timeless Unveils Interactive Web Design for Timeless Type Abduzeedo

Big Tech is cutewashing its AI agents Fast Company Design

All Purpose’s identity for Two Tribes Brewing is resolutely ‘craft’, while also turning its back on all which that signifies BP&O

Gianni’s serves up a slice of bold, handmade design Mindsparkle Mag