D-Bros on the shelf

I am a little bit in love with Japanese illustration, books and stationery. A few items are slowly slipping out of Japan onto the shelves of select shops in London. Happily, I am working near the new-ish Magma 'product' shop at the moment, which sells paper nonsense, amongst other things. And on paper shelves, which is nice.

Magma is all a bit designery and knowing but they like their graphics. And I’ve (almost) given up pretending I’m not like that. I regularly check the shop for new things. Picking amongst their latest Japanese bits and pieces today - I bought myself a nice D-Bros Happy Birthday card. Need I mention it is going on the shelf, not actually to be used?

The D-Bros website is all fur coat and no knickers – as the saying goes. But they do really lovely work. And it is nice to finally see as well as buy some of it over here. Especially after spying it on various Japanese websites. But surfing those many, many Japanese sites is a Catch-22 mouth-watering and frustrating undertaking - don’t know what it says, can’t buy it easily, but want it all.

They do paper so well in Japan. From the country that invented Origami you expect it. But this isn’t about printing on paper; it’s about cutting and forming crisp paper, exquisitely. And it’s about small things, details, quirky illustrations, nods to historical graphics and winks to some of the great designers and illustrators of the mid-20th century: Calder, Girard, Eksell, Munari, Rand…

A journey of delight

Hmm, I am rarely caught off-guard when surfing the internet these days. So much, so many, so seen it. But last week I was looking at a great image of stacking chairs on the design site Mocoloco and clicked through to the exhibition at MoMA in New York: Design and the Elastic Mind. Great name and what looks to be an interesting show, with many familiar names and designs, some new ones, but all gutsily curated. An exhibition with something to say.

But, never mind the exhibition (did I say THAT?) just look at the website... So much thought has gone into this; it is dripping with content, layers and has an intriguing interface. Definitely one of the best exhibition websites I’ve seen in a long time. The credits show the site to be the work of Yugo Nakamura and THA Ltd. His name sounded very familiar and a little bit of searching took me back to an old haunt of mine - when I first discovered surfing the net in a big way - MONO*crafts. Simple, beautiful and at the time, to me, revelatory.

Clicking through THA’s current site it is evident that Nakamura’s work is still simple, extraordinary and then some. Interface design taken to the limits yet so spotlessly executed it becomes seamless and joyful to interact with.

The Elastic Mind site isn’t desperately easy to navigate, but so interesting that I didn’t mind. The search function is lovely, scrolling across the pages, linking results visually. And it feels like a real virtual, curated exhibit, developed alongside the exhibition. Not the usual afterthought - consisting of photographs and visiting information.

It made me feel that athough I won’t see the physical exhibition, I have participated in the experience.