EDDIEWONG

I went to the Nippon Designers exhibition in Shiodome’s Italia Creative Center, one of only a few exhibitions I’ve ever attended in Tokyo. I’m just not an exhibition kinda guy and despite being from the creative industry, I think I have not visited more than 15 art/design exhibitions ever. In the past, during college and university days, I usually resort to design magazines and art director albums for research and to keep up-to-date with “what’s in” before all this was made available on the web.

Anyway, back to the Nippon Designers exhibition topic: recent works from the designers featured in Asahi Shimbun’s “Aera Design - 100 Nippon Designers” were on display by professionals from all genres of the design industry: Architecture models, product designs, graphic designs, films and photography. All the designers featured are supposedly pretty famous in Japan and abroad for their unique styles and are highly praised.

The field-of-works was kinda mixed in the exhibition area: you’d see a poster design on the wall and right next to that you’d have a product design and next to that you’d have a mock-up of an architectural building. Personally, I would have preferred “zones”: graphic design zone, product design zone, architecture zone, etc. But anyway, thats just my preference.

Regarding the works on display, the exhibition was supposed to offer the chance to experience the cutting edge of Japanese creativity. Well, to be quite frank, not a single exhibit blew my pants off. Maybe I was just in a bad mood at that time therefore I couldn’t enjoy and look into the works a little deeper. I was only there for about 35 minutes. Thank god it only cost ¥500!

(No photos were allowed in the exhibition).