Kenya Hara pictures

A couple weeks ago I assisted the inimitable Kenya Hara (art director of the MUJI/No Logo Store and conceptual designer at large) on his jaunt through New York and Washington D.C. I have never met a designer with such a knack for rhetoric in both Japanese and English but somehow I was consigned to interpret for him.

I would have posted pictures a long time ago...HAD THE HARD DRIVE MONSTER NOT EATEN MY PHOTOS RIGHT AFTER HE LEFT. Fortunately his assistant (who's actually one of his senior designers but speaks fluent English) had taken some pictures, which I just got today.

Some choice bits of Hara wisdom:



"I call it 'emptiness' and not 'minimalism' or 'negative space' because I'm Japanese, and those are not Japanese words."






"I am the exact opposite of Karim Rashid. He's obnoxious."




"Everyone was trying to figure out what 'no design' meant, and it took a while for us to figure out it really just meant 'perfect design.'"






"They used to call me spider (kumo) because I was so spindly, but now I'm fat so they call me bear (kuma)."