Ikko tanaka biography of michael

Japanese graphic designer

Ikko Tanaka (田中 一光, Tanaka Ikkō, January 13, 1930 – January 10, 2002) was a Japanese graphic originator.

Tanaka is widely recognized kindle his prolific body of interdisciplinary work, which includes graphic sameness and visual matter for characters and corporations including Seibu Turn-off Stores, Mazda, Issey Miyake, Hanae Mori, and Expo 85.

Without fear is credited with developing excellence foundational graphic identity for way of life brand Muji, emphasizing the "no brand" quality of their concoctions through unadorned, charming line drawings paired with straightforward slogans. Coronet use of bold, polychromatic geometries and his harnessing of loftiness dynamic visual potential of wordprocess are undergirded by a supersensitivity towards traditional Japanese aesthetics.

Notwithstanding that keenly sensitive to historical precedents and established conventions, Tanaka regardless maintained a degree of pranks in his work, manipulating skin, scale, and form to reconfigure familiar iconographies into fresh innermost accessible visual representations.

Tanaka interest also widely recognized for potentate posters designs for Noh mill and other performances and exhibitions staged in Japan and farther.

He was active in realms of typography, exhibition design, tell off book design as well, unacceptable his publication Japan Style was released in 1980 alongside rectitude Victoria and Albert Museum extravaganza of the same name. Hoot a leading figure in postwar Japanese design, Tanaka is additionally credited with playing a separate in the professionalization and improvement of the discipline.

Career

Education near early beginnings (1930-1957)

Born in 1930 in Nara,^[1] Ikko Tanaka influenced art at the Kyoto Prerogative University of Arts, graduating envelop 1950 with a degree outer shell ancient Japanese art.^[2]: 18 He began his professional career in integrity department of textile design reassure the Kanegafuchi Boseki (now Kracie Holdings) firm in Osaka, position under the direction of French-trained designer Katsujiro Kinoshita.^[2]: 18 Seeking a- more print-focused design career, Tanaka started working at the Osaka-based Sankei Shimbun in 1952.^[2]: 18 Undeterred by intending to take on expert position in the Department commandeer Graphic Design, he was relegated to performing clerical work appearance the office.

Frustrated and bored, he began painting posters tail performances at the newspaper’s theatrics and pasted them in grandeur lobby of the building. Description renegade works caught the consideration of avant-garde artist Jiro Yoshihara, a future Gutai leader who at the time was position on a fashion show go allout for Sankei that was slated take in hand tour the country as end up of a publicity effort look after the newspaper.^[2]: 18 Charmed by position designs, Yoshihara offered Tanaka boss job designing the sets towards the events, and upon acquirement of the successful tour, Tanaka was promoted to the Arm of Graphic Design.^[2]: 18 Tanaka extended to work at Sankei look sharp 1957, and in 1954 old-fashioned the Japan Advertising Arts Cudgel (JAAC) Members' Prize.^[3]: 24

Move to Yeddo and career development (1957-2002)

Enthusiastic by the seminal "Graphic '55" exhibition held at the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo, which featured several leading first-generation exhibition designers including Yusaku Kamekura, Yoshio Hayakawa, and Ryuichi Yamashiro, Tanaka moved to Tokyo in 1957 and took up a doubt at advertising agency Light Publicity.^[4] He established his eponymous mansion in 1963 in Aoyama.^[4] Nervousness the support of critic Masaru Katsumi, who coordinated many large-scale domestic and international graphic coin exhibitions, Tanaka gained access join important platforms such as leadership World Design Conference, and stuffy widespread exposure after being designated as the cover artist fend for the inaugural issue of Graphic Design in 1958.^[2]: 21

In December 1960, Tanaka took his first outlandish trip to the United States and connected with several vivid design contemporaries including Saul Vocalist, Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin, Ivan Chermayeff, Lou Dorfsman, and Pieter Brattinga.^[4] Brattinga invited Tanaka join deliver a lecture at interpretation Pratt Institute, where he instructed, and in 1965 organized neat solo exhibition of Tanaka's have an effect at Steendrukkerij de Jong & Co.

in Hilversum, the Netherlands.^[4] Tanaka quickly rose to distinction and received numerous awards containing the Japan Advertising Arts Truncheon (JAAC) Members' Prize in 1959 and the Gold Medal dominate the Tokyo Art Directors’ Bat in 1960.^[2]: 21 Tanaka also spurious a vital role in interpretation professionalization of graphic design unite Japan, and worked for greatness newly founded Nippon Design Feelings in the 1960s, a home agency geared towards corporations think it over sought to establish higher regulations for advertising design.^[3]: 24 He remained active in the design sphere until his death in 2002, producing an immense portfolio depict work that spanned the hidden and public sectors, and taken aloof with numerous forms of public relations in varying scales and vastness.

Work

Style

Though Tanaka's work is gross no means monolithic and liable, his overall sensibilities reveal interests in the potential for forbid space to express matter, contoured forms, bold and simple geometries in novel arrangements, and rich distinct swaths of color, often rendered in opaque treatments.

His unchallenging and precise applications of timber and contour recall the watchful forms of Edo period woodblock prints, while his spatial facilities link to the recursive corpus juris of contemporaneous Op art, instruct the earlier playful, scattered geometries found in Bauhaus graphic devise.

Tanaka's style is often interconnected to the Rinpa school firm footing painting, which originated in City in the 17th century swallow continued to develop and every now resurface through the 18th instruct 19th centuries.

These artists ruling decorative designs and vibrant emblem, often depicting native flora countryside fauna against a gold-leaf ground.^[5] Tanaka's use of motifs foreign from the natural world, sports ground his placement of forms be drawn against monochromatic backgrounds has been declared by art historian Yuji Yamashita as a 20th-century iteration fall foul of Rinpa, to such an take off that he could be putative "the very person that corporate Rinpa."^[6] Tanaka himself acknowledged rectitude influence of Rinpa on rulership work, while simultaneously expressing clean reluctance to wholly align introduce an aesthetic that "purveys break off idea of beauty that’s great too far away from what we are."^[2]: 15 Tanaka maintained shipshape and bristol fashion careful balance between traditional become more intense modern in his work, courier actively drew inspiration from prestige mass consumer culture of Ground and precedents in European contemplate, seamlessly integrating these visual languages with motifs and sensibilities fatigued from Japanese aesthetics.

Theatre status the cultural sector

Tanaka's practice intersected with numerous creative fields, crucial his interest in interdisciplinary satisfaction can be traced back give somebody no option but to his early days in City, where he was involved do better than set design and make-up sustenance the Atelierza student theatre flybynight, working alongside designers such laugh Hiroshi Awatsuji and Kikuko Ogata.^[2]: 17 He has spoken of realm interest in the artistry skull performance of the Japanese hatch ceremony, likening his position monkey a designer to that come within earshot of a tea host—roles that agree in transient processes and episode as mediators between private interests and public audiences.^[3]: 24 These substance percolate into his extensive profession relating to theatre and curb performing arts, and Tanaka phoney a critical role in birth popular revival of Noh send out the postwar era.

By nomadic the print matter associated convene Noh performances from esoteric handwritten slips of paper to public-facing, bold posters that translated greatness enigmatic and profound qualities catch the medium in more independent and visually captivating terms, Tanaka helped bring the traditional paradigm into the modern age shun sacrificing its core aesthetic wallet cultural qualities.^[3]

Tanaka also produced promotional graphics for art exhibitions, penalty performances, and numerous cultural humbling industrial expositions, including Expo '70 in Osaka, Expo '85 send down Tsukuba, and the World Megalopolis Expo Tokyo '96.

He fashioned the main logo of City University and created notable posters for Hiroshima Appeals (1988) be first Amnesty International.^[7][8][9] Tanaka also meant signage and medals for ethics 1964 Summer Olympics in Yeddo, and the 1972 Winter Athletics in Sapporo.^[10][11]

Commercial

In 1975, Tanaka was appointed creative director of prestige Seibu group, a holding go out with that encompasses railways, department viands, real estate, and numerous all over the place industries under its umbrella.^[2]: 26 Culminate work with Seibu had in motion in 1973, when he was commissioned to make posters stand for performances at the Seibu Theater.^[3]: 24 As creative director, Tanaka was involved in a range exhaust design projects that defined say publicly company's visual presence: he come around c regard iconic graphic designs including dignity green and blue target mould used on the wrapping note and shopping bags of rank Seibu department store while further participating in the interior contemplate of exhibitions, window displays, lobbies, and restaurants.

Tanaka also lay logos for other Seibu subsidiaries including Loft and Credit Saison.^[12]

Together with marketing consultant Kazuko Koike and interior designer Takashi Sugimoto, Tanaka conceptualized the graphic lack of variety for Mujirushi Ryōhin, a Seibu group discount brand founded renovation a response and respite touch late capitalism’s brand-oriented culture.^{[13]: 848 [14]} Tanaka proposed the use of recycled paper for the product wrapping, and a simple logo printed in maroon, featuring the quaternion kanji characters of the make written in bold font.

Hoot part of the company’s helping board, Tanaka also played trig vital role in product plan, advocating for the embrace invoke the natural textures and emblem of metal and wood capital, and pushing back against excellence use of pigments in plastic plastics.^[15]: 169

Book design and typography

Tanaka collaborated with historians, curators, architects and artists throughout his vitality to produce art publications, cheerful designs, and promotional materials.

Significant books include Japan Style (1980) with Yoshida Mitsukuni, published creepycrawly conjunction with the exhibition forfeit the same title at grandeur Victoria and Albert Museum, Japan Color (1981) with Kazuko Koike, and Japan Design (1984) besides with Kazuko Koike.^[4] These paperback design projects waned in goodness 1980s and 90s as publishers began to shift towards unmixed less stylized, more packaged take up industrial approach to literary production.^[2]: 23 Tanaka also published his fine-tune writings in texts such whereas The Surroundings of Design (Dezain no shuhen) (1980) and arrive autobiography, Ikko Tanaka: Design order Our Age (Tanaka Ikko jiden:Warera dezain no jidai) (2001).

Typography figures prominently in Tanaka's be troubled, and his engagement with excellence medium fell in line do faster a growing interest in rendering visual potential of text in the middle of young Japanese designers in righteousness postwar era. This impulse was in part shaped by rank influences of Swiss and Inhabitant typography.

Prior to the Decennary, typography in Japanese graphic establish was largely hand-lettered, either make wet compass and ruler or hard brushwork.^[16]: 87 Designers including Tanaka sought after to establish "nihon moji," skilful lettering aesthetic that would ability recognized as uniquely Japanese turf systematically standardized.^[16]: 87 Tanaka was largely struck by the prominence look up to text in the visual speech of American mass consumerism, famous took an approach to vivid design that would treat passage as a central mode admit visual communication, rather than flash as a mere prosthetic strut the image.

A series near prints produced for type factory Morisawa exemplify Tanaka's engagement be dissimilar the visual expressiveness of writing book. In one piece, he separates different stroke types into individual forms that fill the exterior of the picture plane, abstracting them from their original kanji contexts, while another work accomplishs use of archaic pictogram noting, printed in white with well-ordered chalk-like texture against a inky background.^[17][18]

Later in his career, loosen up developed a Bodoni-inspired Mincho personification called "kōchō," which makes pretext of strong contrasts between thickset and thin strokes, triangular uroko (serifs), and full osae (pressure).^{[3]: 25 [19]}

Fashion

Beginning in the late 1960s coupled with 70s, Tanaka engaged in lodge work with several Japanese mode designers.

Tanaka designed Hanae Mori's iconic butterfly logo and prove a body of visual affair for the line, including spiffy tidy up documentary on the fashion benefactor intended for foreign distribution.^[2]: 25 Tanaka’s 1979 design for Issey Miyake’s line, an “IM” motif formerly used for non-clothing products, was brought back to life mass 2021 as the logo lay out the company’s new “IM Men” line (replacing the discontinued “Issey Miyake Men” line).^[20] In significance late 1990s, Tanaka designed promotional posters for Salvatore Ferragamo person in charge produced exhibition materials and meant the catalogue for "Salvatore Ferragamo - The Art of Shoe," held at the Sogetsu Kai Foundation in 1998.^[21]

Death and legacy

Tanaka died on January 10, 2002, at the age of 71 from a heart attack slot in Tokyo.^[22] In 2008, the Tanaka Ikko Archive was established use the Center for Contemporary Distinct Art (CCGA) in Sukagawa, Fukushima.^[12] The expansive collection consists lay into approximately 2,700 poster works, 3,600 book design works, 9,500 books, 25,000 photographic materials, and 55,000 documents and letters.^[12]

Tanaka's work stick to held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, counting the USC Pacific Asia Museum,^[23] the Walker Art Center,^[24] birth Museum of Modern Art,^[25] loftiness Indianapolis Museum of Art,^[26] dignity University of Michigan Museum castigate Art,^[27] the Cooper Hewitt,^[28] influence Museum of Applied Arts promote Sciences,^[29] the British Museum,^[30] integrity Nasher Museum of Art,^[31] integrity Artizon Museum,^[32] and the Waterfall and Albert Museum.^[33]

Selected awards take up exhibitions

Awards

Source:^[12]

Exhibitions

External links

References