The last week of February saw numerous visits by Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Design visual communication students and academic staff to the Japan Creative Centre at Nassim Road. While the Year 3 design students made their own way to the Yuji Kimura exhibition, a busload of visual com Year 1 and 2 students had a grand day of an outing, as testified by the photographs below.
Visual com students making their way to the Japan Creative Centre
Yuji Kimura has put his hand to multitudes of magazines and literary publications over the years and is, without doubt, a shining gem in the field of editorial design. There is simply no other person that has the presence or influence that Kimura commands. His methodology is steeped in an intimacy that is all-pervasive.
The Japanese Hot Designers Series is a series of exhibitions showcasing the work of outstanding contemporary Japanese designers. Held at the Japan Creative Centre in Singapore, a new type of culture and information centre which showcases Japan’s “now” including the latest in pop culture and cutting‐edge technology, the series aim to introduce key players of the Japanese design scene in a variety of fields such as fashion, product design and lifestyle goods.
About Yuji Kimura
Born 1947 in Hokkaido, Japan. Art director and designer. After graduating from Musashino Art University, College of Art and Design, ten years working in Tamotsu Ejima’s design studio. In 1982, he goes solo and founds the Kimura Design Office. In 1987, Esquire Japan, with Kimura on board from day one as art director, bursts on the scene marking an epoch in the history of Japanese editorial and design work.
Esquire Japan proves to be an unparalleled influence on designers during that period and goes on to become the handbook for top quality magazine production. Kimura also works in the book design field, and, in 2002, receives the Kodansha Publications Cultural Award. Based on his editorial and design work for the fortnightly newspaper insert in The Asahi Shimbun, The Asahi Shimbun GLOBE, beginning in 2008, Kimura is chosen by the Tokyo Art Directors Club as receipient of the 2009 ADC Award.
“What kind of a game is “an exhibition”, I wonder?
An exhibition where you just lay out a whole bunch of work to recreate the past is not something I am into. After toying round with a variety of ideas, I decided to view the JCC facility as a “bookcase”, and play the game of “how do I line things up”. It’s not just books and magazines in my bookcase at home, there are all sorts of things lined up there. There’s a bromide of an actress, a plaster cast of my teeth, etchings, a shoe (I bought several pars in Paris, but I put on a little weight and now they don’t fit, so they have become “objet d’art”), a “cast” of my head made out of wet-wipes, assorted tools and bits and pieces… the list goes on. I arrived at the idea of bringing the private life of my bookcase, which I don’t show to anyone else, into the exhibition space. In so doing, I was finally able to come up with a “rulebook” that would allow me to concentrate on playing the game of putting together an exhibition.”
Yuji Kimura
A style all of its own… i-D magazine fashion spread via Trend Land
i-D Magazine- “ID is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The magazine is known for its innovative photography and typography, and over the years established a reputation as a training ground for fresh talent.” -Wikipedia
This June 1999 National Geographic magazine article is written and photographed by David Coulson who reports about the intriguing scenes carved in African rock shelters and on cliffs some 2500 – 9000 years ago.
The spread opens up with a gate-fold on the right and depicts a procession of giraffes, carved some 7000 years ago into the African rock.
Magazine layout design
The most beautiful and evocative photographs can be dismissed in the hands of someone untrained in layout design. Layout design, in this case for magazines, is when carefully chosen photographs are selected by the editing team – sometimes a combination of editor and art director – and then woven by the designer into a visual feast for the eyes and intellect; attracting the reader’s attention while proffering the contents.
Here’s an example of magazine layouts taken from a past issue of National Geographic magazine. This November 2000 article features Luis Marden; writer, photographer and explorer whose 64 years with the National Geographic shaped their magazine.
Beautiful intro spread. The loosely spaced headline is an Art Deco like typeface, it acts as a 1930's link to Marden's 64 years of involvement with the magazine. The pictorial page at right has a sepia-toned image of the man himself - with a Mexican sombero!. The contextual link is a memorabilia - a little National Geographic Society flag, which places everything into perspective.
