" The Journey of Posters-- Japanese Classic Poster Exhibition" is about to close, which displayed more than 80 poster designs by 17 "top streams" in the design industry, including Kazumasa Nagai and Shigeo Fukuda. The exhibition attracted many visitors.

　　Today, let's follow the scholars into the creative world of the masters while feeling the visual impact of the works and deepen our understanding of the works through guided tours and analyses.

　　01 Illustration Style

　　Akiyama and UG Sato

　　The characteristics of Takashi Akiyama's work are related to his profession, as he has been a professor of illustration at Tama Art University for a long time, so his illustrations are very friendly, popular and easy to understand, and his works are more direct to express the message he wants to convey, so that the viewer will be able to relate to them.

　　The most important feature of Takashi Akiyama's works is the application of lines and colours. He is a poster designer with a good foundation in drawing. In his works, one can feel his solid foundation in drawing and his ease in the use of colours, paying attention to the relationship of hues in each piece of work, and conveying what he wants to express with colours.

　　UG Sato is also a famous illustrator, and his illustration style is very different from that of Takashi Akiyama's, with more hidden ideas and art forms and depth of content. when viewing his work, one can feel the combination of humour and thoughtfulness.

　　UG Sato Works

　　02 Pursuit of Aesthetics

　　Shin Matsunaga and Koichi Sato

　　Both of these designers are particularly strict about showing beauty in their work. Shin Matsunaga's work has a sense of smoothness, simplicity and beauty. His works are very simple, he pursue the visual effect of beauty. Several of his works in this exhibition, such as the International Designers Conference, YKK, and the water theme, are able to give audience an immediate sense of beauty when they stand in front of his works.

　　Water for Life

　　Author: Makoto Matsunaga

　　Koichi Sato's pursuit of beauty is almost extreme. If there is a major difference between his aesthetics and Matsunaga's, it is that his works contain more of his understanding of culture and religion. His use of colour is not just about the pursuit of beauty, but also shows his understanding and pursuit of faith and society. It can be said that it is difficult for designers to learn Koichi Sato's technique of expression, because it seems to be simple, but it is very profound in terms of colour expression and formal application.

　　03Manual and Computer

　　Kazumasa Nagai and Mikao Katsui

　　Kazumasa Nagai is one of the most patriarchal designers still working in Japan today, and the most important characteristic of his work is the pursuit of handmade. However, his handmade style is combined with a sense of mechanics to accentuate the design. Recently, his work has been more of a return to nature, making it feel very intimate and empathetic.

　　The great difference between Mitsuo Katsui and Kazumasa Nagai is that his works are all computer generated. It can be said that he is the earliest and most representative computer style artist among designers, so he is also known as the "Father of Light" and the "Father of Computer Design". His works are mainly abstract in style.

　　Image source: Works by Mikio Katsui

　　04 Choreography

　　Katsumi Asaba

　　Katsumi Asaba's work is characterised by the use of choreography and a great deal of mechanical rigour. In this exhibition of Katsumi Asaba's promotional posters for Issey Miyake's clothing products, we can see that he boldly used the reference line method of choreography in the presentation of his posters, bringing out the high quality, sophistication, and fashionable modern style of Issey Miyake's brand works.

　　Issey Miyake Clothing Brand

　　Katsumi Asaba

　　05 Graphic Representation

　　Masaki Hiromura and Ken Miki

　　Masaki Hiromura and Ken Miki are both designers who are most representative of the study and expression of graphics. Masaki Hiromura has always been a master of profound research into graphic design, and he is the designer of "Super Variety", He is the designer of Super Variety, which won world acclaim at the Tokyo '20 Olympics.

　　Design of "Super Change" for the Opening Ceremony of the 2020 Macau Games in Tokyo

　　Ken Miki is a rather all-round graphic designer, with excellent results in terms of layout, print production requirements, research into graphics and the design of text. The poster works we exhibit this time are also representative of his works combining text and graphics.

　　Ken Miki Works

　　06 Social Themes

　　Fukuda Shigeo and Aoba Ikki

　　These two designers are rightly called the patriarchs of the patriarchs in the world of poster design that creates social themes, and their use of graphics in the form of publicity posters in their designs has been a great inspiration to Chinese designers.

　　Shigeo Fukuda's posters are designed with humour, variety and a quest for the uncanny. The original works of Shigeo Fukuda on display are the posters for his own large integrated solo exhibition held in a famous Japanese shopping mall, and the graphics of the works shown in the posters also give us a sense of the huge amount of works.

　　1992 Shigeo Fukuda Exhibition Poster

　　Aoba Ikki uses more of a combination of photography and collage in his poster design. At the same time, the content of his posters differed greatly from Shigeo Fukuda's in terms of social thought. While Shigeo Fukuda mainly works with hand-drawn graphics, Ikki Aoba cleverly uses photography to express his thoughts, and he has produced many posters related to social welfare as a result.

　　07 Photography

　　Norito Shimura and Taihiro Sawada

　　Norito Shimura's style of work is very natural and intimate, which can be felt in his Indy series of posters. He pursues a handmade style, but this is interspersed with a lot of technical, ideological and internal components. His poster work "Kam Fish Flag" is very precious in this exhibition, which shows his nostalgia for his hometown and at the same time his pursuit and exploration of the subtle colour variations unique to fish can be seen.

　　Nishiki Fish Flag" by Norito Shimura

　　Taihiro Sawada's design pursuits are very rich, and the work "Waves" on display is his masterpiece. He has made an abstract representation of the shape of the wave, so that what we see is not just a wave, but an ink painting, a subtle flow of colours, from which we can feel the visual impact.

　　08Founder

　　Ryozo Hayakawa

　　This exhibition only shows one poster by Ryozo Hayakawa, but it is a very precious one. He is one of the pioneers of Japanese modern design and one of the most advanced designers. From his works, we can glimpse the beginning of Japanese modern design and feel the influence of Picasso. In the early stages of the Japanese modern design world, there were many people influenced by Picasso, which can be regarded as a landmark event that changed Japan's traditional design methods. Picasso's distorted and simple style marked the beginning of modern design in Japan. Therefore, through the work of Ryozo Hayakawa, we can deeply feel the great influence of Picasso on modern Japanese design and get a glimpse of the pursuit of early Japanese designers. This work symbolises an important symbol of Japan's entry into the modern design stage.

　　In addition, this exhibition also has many other famous artists' beautiful poster works brilliantly presented, all in the " The Journey of Posters-- Japanese Classic Poster Exhibition ".