Awarded Work

Peace campaign posters and related works

(org: Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation + Hiroshima Peace Creation Fund + JAGDA Hiroshima)

Award Winner

ONUKI Takuya

Publication

“Graphic Design in Japan 2022” (July 2022)

Award Ceremony

JAGDA General Assembly on 10 June 2021 in Kumamoto

Exhibition
Tokyo | Tuesday 12 July – Saturday 20 August 2022 | Creation Gallery G8

Niigata | Sunday 11 – Sunday 18 December 2022 | Gallery, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

Selection Process of the 24th Yusaku Kamekura Design Award

The Yusaku Kamekura Design Award was established in 1999 to commemorate the achievements of Yusaku Kamekura (1915–1997), JAGDA’s first president, and to contribute to the ongoing development of graphic design. The award was made possible through a generous donation from Mr. Kamekura’s family. It is presented each year to the work judged most outstanding among all entries in the JAGDA Annual, regardless of category.

Preliminary nominations for the award were made in December 2021 by the 29 members of the JAGDA Annual Screening Committee. Their selections were made from among the 1,971 works entered in the competition to be included in the 2022 edition of the JAGDA Annual: Graphic Design in Japan. To begin, from among all works nominated for JAGDA Awards in their respective categories, the committee extracted 86 entries garnering the highest numbers of votes. Excluded at this time were 44 works by 14 designers who had previously received the award (Katsumi Asaba, Kenya Hara, Kazunari Hattori, Yoshiaki Irobe, Kaoru Kasai, Atsuki Kikuchi, Kazumasa Nagai, Masayoshi Nakajo, Kashiwa Sato, Taku Satoh, Katsuhiko Shibuya, Ryoji Tanaka, Ryosuke Uehara and Yoshie Watanabe). The committee members next voted for the works they felt deserving of the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award, with each member having a total of 5 votes. All eligible works were displayed anonymously, and committee members were barred from voting for their own works. This stage of the selection process resulted in a list of 14 works by 11 individual designers and 1 group (with 2 entrants receiving votes for multiple works).
The final award selection was conducted on December 21, 2021 by the 10 members of the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Selection Committee. In compliance with the rule that limits one nominated work per designer or team of designers, exhibiting artists having multiple preliminary nominations were ultimately nominated for the work, or series of works on the same theme, selected by majority vote by the Selection Committee. This reduced the number of final nominations to 12. Next, voting took place anonymously, with each member of the committee permitted to cast up to 3 votes, followed by discussion of each work’s merits. The nominations were at this point narrowed down to 3 works that had received the most votes: works by Takuya Onuki, Haruka Misawa and Noriaki Hayashi. A final round of voting resulted in Mr. Onuki’s work garnering a majority 7 votes, and accordingly the 24th Yusaku Kamekura Design Award was bestowed on Takuya Onuki.
The award-winning work was the 2021 edition of “HIROSHIMA APPEALS,” the series of peace-promoting posters created by a different JAGDA member each year, coupled with related works. Besides creating the physical poster itself, Mr. Onuki used augmented reality (AR) whereby the viewer, by placing a smartphone over the poster image, sees the white dove appear out of black snow. The judges expressed their high acclaim of the work. “The contrast between the scary impact of the black snow globe and the beauty of the white dove evokes a clear and powerful message.” “Every aspect of the work, starting with the dove’s three-dimensional form, is crafted with sheer perfection, absolutely brilliant.” “The designer has injected new technology into this peace campaign with its long history, and I sense his firm determination to convey the memory of the atomic bombing to the next generation.” “The work has a persuasive power befitting the designer’s extensive background in creating advertising.”
The runner-up work was the group of display kits created by Haruka Misawa for a museum’s traveling exhibition. Here too, the judges lavished approval on the work. “Despite its finely detailed and densely crafted production, there is nothing oppressive about the work; I get the feeling rather of a flexible, expansive perspective.” “The work’s details, rationality and design are entirely in agreement.” Noriaki Hayashi’s posters for Joshibi University of Art and Design also drew accolades. “After working for a long time with colored surfaces, here Hayashi shifts to linear expression, making for a fresh change.” “Graphically, these works are very powerful, in terms of the straightforwardness of their forms and the way space is used.” Both Ms. Misawa and Mr. Hayashi have been frequent candidates for the Yusaku Kamekura Design Award in recent years, and the judges expressed high hopes for their future works.
(Text by Yusaku Kamekura Design Award Office)

[Nominated Works]

Takuya Onuki: peace campaign posters and related works
Tomohiro Okazaki: video for project by paper processing company
Eriko Kawakami: chocolate packaging
Shogo Kishino: hospital signage
Aoshi Kudo: cosmetics packaging
Arata Kubota: fruit packaging
Norito Shinmura / Kosuke Niwano: campground posters
Yui Takada: motion graphic to publicize arts festival
Mitsuhiro Tomita: book design for furniture manufacturer’s corporate history
Hiroaki Nagai: box commemorating designer’s retrospective, exhibition tools and spatial design
Noriaki Hayashi: promotional posters for university
Haruka Misawa: display kits for museum’s traveling exhibition