Special Feature: Post Pop Graphics
TAKORA Kimiyoshi Futori, Daijiro Ohara, Kazunori Sadahiro, Yuichi Yokoyama, Isamu Gakiya, Tomoe, JUN OSON, Shu-Thang Grafix, Hideki Tanaka, Yuko Shimizu, Yusuke Nakamura, POST POPPERS [Lie Fujishiro, lilicalolica, odayaka, umelabo], shk, Ayano, suzuko, MYNA, Maho Nishimura / Interview Tadanori Yokoo “Y-ji Machi” / Interview Steven Heller “Design into Words” / [Bound-in zine] Akatoki inaugural preparatory issue Edit & design : Yasuyo Iwata, Akari Ohno, Kaname Kawamoto, Yasuo Totsuka

TAKORA Kimiyoshi Futori
Visual Works of TAKORA
Kimiyoshi Futori of TAKORA is a visual creator and an artist whose work is recognized both in Japan and overseas. His works consist of graphical approaches expanded throughout the space. While current market consumes traditional graphic design and illustration as techniques, he attempts to reinstate communication through graphic from the view point of both a consumer and a creator.

Daijiro Ohara
MOZINE IDEA EDITION
Daijiro Ohara is a budding designer who creates artwork and videos of musicians such as SAKEROCK and ASA-CHANG. While his unique hand-made style and direction have received attention, he energetically holds exhibitions and creates ZINEs as part of his communication channels. His honest thoughts are presented.

Kazunori Sadahiro
Into Graphical Forests
Kazunori Sadahiro has been actively creative in multiple fields of figurative arts and design since his strong debut in the early 90’s, when he won variety of awards. Organic graphic works of Sadahiro, who is creative beyond the framed professionalism of art and design, are introduced.

Yuichi Yokoyama
The strange world in daily life
While he yearned for Contemporary Arts, he broke new ground in the field of manga comics. His works illustrate time flow and movement of people simply yet rhythmically, which draw readers into a strange world with realistic sensations.

Isamu Gakiya
Twisted Pop
Mix of vulgar American Comic imagery like Jack Kirby’s works/ grade-B horror pictures/ pulp magazines and Japanese manga/ anime/ game graphics starts emitting an odd fusion of multi-cultures just like rent-style story comics in the Showa 30’s and Twisted Pop. Here are imageries of Gakiya, an up-and-coming illustrator who won the grand prize of the First “1_WALL” exhibition.

Tomoe
Critical Typographic-Hits
Tomoe’s typographic art is created through “ordinary now & here” which is derived from 90’s boys’ culture that he was immersed in and honest observation of modern Japanese spirituality that have been attracted to forms and sounds of Western alphabets.

Illustrators Flat & Bold
The domain of Illustrations has expanded at an explosive pace since the late 90’s along with the appearance of computers. Their nonstop spectrum through craftsmanship and tableau-ism to “just keeping hands busy” as a hobby has been generating massive amount of works in unlimited contexts of classic illustrations to manga/anime. It may not be appropriate to word their work and domain as “illustration” however, in this overwhelming reality, it is equivalent in the fact as “drawn graphic.” Their perpetual cross-referencing is a continuity towards next works. While Flatland has been quite busy, illustrations in so-called Real World have had a tough situation within shift of Media. Even in such a situation, there are young illustrators who hold firm views towards the media and their own stance to flexibly and boldly keep creating in the commercial field. In today’s huge variety of media, they proactively face different cultures and expressions and create rich communication fields through each attractive approaches.

JUN OSON
Jun Oson is an up and coming illustrator who develops unique pop-ness from a cross point of Pop Illustrations in the 80’s, Graphics in the 90’s and Net Culture in the 00’s.

Shu-Thang Grafix
Shuhei Urano, an illustrator, is active in variety of media including magazines such as “R25” and “BRUTUS.” Cool line drawings are somewhat dislocated with his unique humor, his works vividly represents current Japanese illustrations.

Hideki Tanaka
Interview of Hideki Tanaka who has been working in the frontline of the tide of illustrations since the 90’s to today, whose works are constructed of graphics like blueprints and diagrams, unfurling uniquely mysterious worlds.

Yuko Shimizu
Yuko Shimizu is a successful illustrator in New York, a cultivating center of illustration. While she immerses herself in the city where today’s globalism and Oriental-ism blend, she dynamically draws her original ideas and expands her stage out internationally.

Yusuke Nakamura
Yusuke Nakamura, who worked on multiple musicians’ CD jackets and a variety of book covers, has gained new fans in wide generations through his portfolio, “Blue,” published in the Summer of 2009. His fresh yet melancholic illustrations hold a certain way of looking at the world, backed with clear philosophies and detailed work.

Floating Drawings
POST POPPERS [Lie Fujishiro, lilicalolica, odayaka, umelabo]
It’s an art group project that Uso Fujishiro launched in March, 2008. They developed exhibition that summons internet connection to real world. Participants are flexible and ones introduced in this articles are chosen by the editorial staff of IDEA from past participants.

shk
Has been releasing music and other works on a website since 2008. Also active in a creative circle “RYOSHIKI-HA (Common Sense Wing).” In this article, we introduce Esashika’s works with strong taste of collage and drawings.

Ayano
Mainly active in a blog. She has been releasing drawings of girls looking somewhat troubled or silenced. Texts are used ornamentally, creating odd composition with the character.

suzuko
Mainly active in a web, and has been releasing works in current style since 2008. Her works intercommunicate between digital and analog with a motif of pretty girls with defects and wounds used in distinguished and ornamental approach.

MYNA
Started drawing in the 80’s, influenced by SF comic books. Her work, in which the character’s garment gradually becomes a complicated pattern, blends into the background, and is quite daunting.

Maho Nishimura
She works with ball point pen to create line drawings with an orgain world theme that’s generated from drawing down details of chain reaction of imagery. Recently she has started performances such as live drawings and request drawings.

Photo Book “Y-Ji-Ro (Tokyo Y Junctions)” publication interview
“Tadanori Yokoo – waiting for Y Junctions”
Interviewer : Fumio Tachibana
Successful as a graphic design industry ground breaker since the 60’s, Tadanori Yokoo was mainly active in art field since the 80’s, energetically creative within Japan and overseas. His expression widely ranges in oil painting, silk screen, collage, etc, and he developed Yokoo-world with unique style and coloring. From 2000, he has been drawing pictures with a theme of Y junction and in 2009 he published his photographs of Y junctions as “Tokyo Y Junctions.” Yokoo challenges into different expressions using Y junctions as a single stage. Fumio Tachibana, a graphic designer and an artist in different generation, who is also challenging in photographic expression, tries to reach the origin of Yokoo’s philosophy and creativity towards art, photography and printing, represented through Y junction.

Interview Steven Heller “Design into Words”
For more than 30 years, he has worked as an art director of The New York Times. Heller is now involved in design education at a the grad school of School of Visual Arts, New York. He has written and edited multiple books, the number of his published books is more than 100. We interviewed him about the history of his career, which started when he did art direction of an underground newspaper, on how he has been leading American design journalism, and about his views on illustrations and designs as well as how designers’ should be in the future.

[Bound-in zine] Akatoki inaugural preparatory issue
Interview Nobuo Nakagaki
Edit & design : Yasuyo Iwata, Akari Ohno, Kaname Kawamoto, Yasuo Totsuka