Fabian Stech

Japan gives the impression that everything is regulated by visual signs, beginning with the subway waiting lane marks to the plastic food in restaurants. It is true that not understanding and reading a language leads to a special kind of visual concentration because the eye is searching to guide you. However the omnipresence of visual signs in Japan depends also on the writing system the kanji imported from China which presents a word or a concept by an image. (This is also the reason why Japanese have a better memory, one character represents a word so that they can memorize longer sequences of sense.) It is not astonishing that all kind of signs have a real graphical impact with their great elegance and simplicity. Perhaps this explains even the graphical outline of japanese contemporay art. In the newly built Midtown complex the Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc. (JAGDA) held an exhibition on graphic design with examples of their yearbook 2010 which was, and that is rare in Japan, free of admission. Unfortunatly the graphic design exposed was in fact quite academic.