Digital Creative Arts - Oct 2003
Letter from Japan

'Proficient when it tries to listen frankly, what an old person is good'; I'm reading a nonsensical phrase on the reverse of a guy's purple T-shirt, standing outside the subway station in Shinjuku, downtown Tokyo. It's raining, midnight and only Tuesday but all around, Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner vision of a dark metropolitan future is alive. To say that Tokyo, heck Japan itself, is an eye-opener is a massive understatement. The people, language, culture, architecture, graphic design; is all just so different. You may have guessed; this is my first trip to Japan.

In Nagoya, exactly 100 minutes by Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Tokyo, the annual Icograda, International Council of Graphic Design Associations, conference is being held. We, at the University of Brighton, hold the prestigious Icograda archives: thousands of examples of the best graphic design on the planet. I'm here, having been asked to make a presentation about design education in the UK and have to admit; I jumped at the chance. Speaking for 40 minutes to 400 people and designing an exhibition of student design work seemed a small price to pay for a 10-day trip to this stunning country. Granted, I've my work cut out; I have had to sit through presentations by graphic design's elite: Neville Brody, Jonathan Barnbrook, Seymour Chwast, Stefan Sagmeister, Tadanori Yoko, John Maeda, Shigeo Fukuda; tough job.

Onto Tokyo, and attendance at events organised as part of Tokyo Designers Block, a week of weird and wonderful happenings, exhibitions, openings, parties and talks by architects, designers, artists and photographers. I spend my days rushing from gallery to shop to studio to mall to gallery to studio to; you get the picture. I've eaten eel, chicken cartilage, salted fish-bone and the obligatory washing-up bowl of ramen noodles: the entire experience proving to be more than just an eye-opener. I've seen some amazing sights, drunk in the culture, now where do I buy the T-shirt?

© Lawrence Zeegen