Another Japanese Master. Don’t know much about him, but I think little needs to be said here. Enjoy.

The last issue of NewWork Magazine brought to my attention the work of Werner Jeker. We, as graphic designers, often times are confronted with an argument of “laziness”. This particularly comes when a designer seems to rely too heavily upon a photographer’s merits. However, I ask the critics “is a conductor of an orchestra lazy?” Werner Jeker is a true master of photographic image and cropping like his contemporary Bruno.

“He is my favorite and strongest counter example whenever I run into some narrow minded “expert” that tries to convince me that a particular poster is no good because the designer “just used a photograph” instead of drawing a picture himself.”

Swiss.

The work of Japanese designer Hideki Nakajima is quite well known. He’s had a prolific career working with luminaries such as Ryuichi Sakamoto and Issey Miyake. Nakajima has been in the game a while, but he continues to create.

It’s really interesting to see these older designers transcend into a level of graphic mastery. Just thinking about this creates thousands of thoughts about design vs. art and I’ve had many conversations about it. But when I see the personal work of designers like Nakajima, I see someone who is creating art with design processes inherited from their pratice. Peter Saville himself stated that design is art without the need to defend one’s moves and intents. But just because much of this type of work is purelly form-based, does not discount its greatness. Rather, I think that this ‘old-master form design’ work transcends design due to it’s obviously calculated and meditative qualities. Designers like Karl Martens and Bruno Munari come to mind. These guys created work that broke the boundaries of client-based design, but they only did so by a thorough lifelong pursuit of form. True mastery. It’s great to see Nakajima rise to those ranks.