Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

Japanese Movie Tickets

Design is a religion for the Japanese. Even the most

everyday objects are imbued with elegance. Economy

is a sacrament. And this may explain the fervent

embrace of European modernism by Japanese designers

during the early 1920 s. The Japanese fascination with

things Western is not just a late twentieth-century

phenomenon. The Bauhaus and Russian Constructivist

ideas were taught in art schools and universities by

graphic artists, architects, and painters who had studied

in the Western capitals. They translated the documents

of modernism, including F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist

Manifesto(published in 1909 in Suburu), and filtered

these works into popular and commercial cultures.

Modernism as substance and style developed over two

decades through the design of magazines, books, logos,

posters, and even movie tickets.

From the Meiji era ( 1868 – 1912 ) to the present,

Western aesthetics have influenced Japanese popular arts

in various ways. James Fraser, coauthor of Japanese Modern

(Chronicle Books, 1996 ), notes that the Japanese people

value anything new that came by way of the sea.

“Modernist ideas came thick and fast in ships (and

planes)...Some designers were successful in assimilating

and transforming Western design concepts and style that

were perceived as being modern. Others appropriated

Western styles badly.. .” Devout Japanese moderns

advanced the “form follows function” ethic in publications

that echoed their European counterparts, while the

opportunistic commercial artists simply appropriated the surface, void of its

utopian doctrines. The principal purveyor of the new graphic style was a

multivolume manual titled The Complete Commercial Artist,published by the

Association of Commercial Artists. This manual provided art directors and

designers with templates for copying both modern and modernistic

approaches. Different volumes were devoted to posters, logos, shop signs and

display windows, advertisements, and package design. It encouraged

commercial artists to reject the traditional for the nouveau. Owners of stores

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