Awarded works:
Image Poster for cosmetic company “SHISEIDO” (cl: Shiseido)
Award winner: Katsuhiko Shibuya

JAGDA Annual: “Graphic Design in Japan 2012” published on 25 June 2012.
Award Ceremony: JAGDA General Assembly 2012 on 9 June, 2012 at Toyama International Conference Center
Exhibition:
Tuesday, 27 March to Friday, 27 April 2012 at Creation Gallery G8
Thursday, 18 October to Sunday, 28 October 2012 at 2F Gallery, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

Selection Processof the 14th Yusaku Kamekura Design Award
Screening of the 2,484 works submitted for the 2012 edition of the JAGDA Annual: Graphic Design in Japan was conducted by the 30 members of the JAGDA Annual Screening Committee in early December in 2011. Due to differences in the number of selection committee members in each category, the borderline votes differed between the categories of graphic design in general and interactive design/motion graphics, computer-adjusted scores were used considering votes in graphics in general as the standard. As a result, the works which garnered 22.4 votes and more were shortlisted.
However, some selection committee members proposed that the borderline should be lowered for the posters as the number of works submitted to that category was larger than the rest, and some works from the category should be included among the candidates. The Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Office was entrusted with the selection of a candidate from the posters category.

As a result, the adjusted score of 21.6 votes was applied as the border line for posters. From among the 42 shortlisted works, 18 works by the seven past award winners (Katsumi Asaba, Taku Satoh, Kazumasa Nagai, Masayoshi Nakajo, Kazunari Hattori, Kenya Hara, Shin Matsunaga) were excluded, and 24 works by 17 designers were further shortlisted.

The final selection was conducted on December 15, 2011, by the 11 members of the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Selection Committee. Following the rule of selecting only one work per designer, the Committee members discussed narrowing down the selected entries to one work for one designer (target designers were Kaoru Kasai, Atsuki Kikuchi, Kenjiro Sano, Ren Takaya, Tomohiro Watabe/Hisaaki Hirawata, and Yoshie Watanabe).

Each Committee member had the right to cast up to three votes, and the voting took place anonymously. The three works by Kasai, Shibuya and Nagai were selected as final candidates with more than five votes. Through decisive voting, the work by Shibuya won the Award with eight votes.

The advertisement series for Shiseido was experimental and initially attempted in magazines. Through this series, Shibuya had been dealing with the arabesque pattern which could be considered as the corporate identity of Shiseido, and finally he came to be reputed as “having given a new life to the pattern to suit to a new age”.

Members of Selection Committee
Yusaku Kamekura Award Board of Directors: Kazumasa Nagai (chairman), Katsumi Asaba, Mitsuo Katsui, Koichi Sato, Taku Satoh, Masayoshi Nakajo, Kenya Hara, Shin Matsunaga

Special Committee Members
Shoji Katagishi, Shigeo Goto, Minoru Nomata

(Text by the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Office)