Design Houdini: A Major Retrospective of Shigeo Fukuda

Branding and Pitchbook This was a proposal for an exhibition to the Art Gallery of Ontario for Design Houdini: A Major Retrospective of Shigeo Fukuda. Torontonians and tourists of any age are the primary targets of this campaign. Fukuda's design sensibilities always included wit, whimsy and humour along with novelty, which takes the forefront in terms of this campaign's design approach. This is apparent in the direction chosen for the design of posters within posters and its subjects jumping out to life. The simple colour palette chosen echoes Fukuda's designs but also transcends language appropriate to Fukuda's work. The name Design Houdini is representative of Fukuda's design recipe of design innovation along with Illusionism. Upon research on Shigeo Fukuda, his works always contained humour, wit and originality. From his famous quote, "I believe that in design, 30% dignity, 20% beauty and 50% absurdity are necessary," comes my main inspiration to the design approach for this project. Besides his design trademarks of illusionism and whimsy, a portrayal of modernity that could translate to the Toronto audience was my main goal — minimal and clean yet eye-catching and fresh. Some common themes in Fukuda's work include legs, scroll posters and levitation which became the source of direction for the imagery of this campaign. In his 1975 Japanese Exhibition poster design, a play on positive male legs and negative women legs are depicted which are reinterpreted for this campaign as individual legs jumping out to life and out of its confined posters which is an ode to Fukuda's design mantra of out-of-the-box originality and innovation. The campaign entailed to create its own unique design direction but also be representative of Fukuda's work. This design approach echoes through the whole campaign in different variation including banners, bus shelters, t-shirts, buttons and bags.

The ELEMENTS

The direction decided for this campaign is inspired by poster within a poster with its objects within coming to life. The graphic assets used all through out the campaign include a scroll poster with female and male legs seeming to escape from the poster constrictions. The male legs and female legs graphics are extracted from Japanese Exhibition, 1975 poster seen in page four. Three colours are used in the campaign — red, yellow and blue — which was commonly seen in the artist’s works.

The COLOUR PALETTE

This colour scheme was inspired by Fukuda's use of minimal yet striking colours. He mostly used colours graphically and with vividness. I took this as an inspiration and chose colours that he used a lot which are very basic colours that are very much eye-casting and modern.

The APPLICATIONS

The PITCHBOOK

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