The character arc of Kenya Hara
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in 1958 in Okayama prefecture. Between then and now sit a masters at Musashino Art University completed in 1983, a job at Nippon Design Center taken straight afterwards, the opening and closing ceremony programmes for the 1998 Winter Olympics, a signage system for a hospital, an exhibition in 2000 that asked thirty two leading Japanese creators to redesign the dullest objects in the house, the art directorship of Muji from 2001, a professorship from April 2003, a second exhibition about touch in 2004, two books that the field treats as theory, and a logo for a Chinese phone company. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Kenya Hara?
He handed them toilet paper and matches. They took it seriously.
He is from Okayama prefecture and graduated from Musashino Art University, joining the Nippon Design Center after finishing his masters there in 1983. That is an unglamorous beginning: a large, established Japanese design company, and a young designer inside it.
The first thing most people saw was the 1998 Winter Olympics, whose opening and closing ceremony programmes he designed, and the signage system for the Umeda Hospital that same year. But the work that made him a figure rather than a practitioner was an exhibition.
In 2000 he organised Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century. He invited thirty two leading Japanese creators, from architecture, graphic design, lighting, fashion and photography, and told them to redesign tedious goods. Shigeru Ban took toilet paper. Kengo Kuma took the roach trap. Kaoru Mende took matches, Kosuke Tsumura took nappies, Naoto Fukasawa took tea bags, and somebody took the entry and exit stamps in a passport. Hara described it as a means by which to correct and renew our feelings about the essence of design, hidden within the fascinating environment of an object so overly familiar to us that we can no longer see it. It began at a Tokyo paper show and travelled to Glasgow, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Toronto, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing.
In 2001 he became art director of Muji, a job he still holds, which is the largest possible test of that idea: a company whose entire proposition is objects with nothing added to them. In 2004 he made a second exhibition, Haptic, about sensory perception, in which he told designers including Jasper Morrison, Naoto Fukasawa, Kengo Kuma and Toyo Ito to design an object motivated not by form or colour but by touch. Others followed on fibre, on cars, and one, shown in eight cities, on architecture for dogs.
He has been a professor at Musashino Art University since April 2003, teaching communication design and design theory. His books Designing Design and White are recognised as important in design theory and aesthetics. He did the official posters for Expo 2005 in Aichi, the identity for the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, a new design for a Ginza department store, and a fragrance launch with Kenzo in 2008. In 2021 he redesigned the logo of the phone company Xiaomi, converting a square into a combination of a square and a circle, unveiled on 31 March, for which he was paid three hundred thousand dollars and which the internet argued about for a week.
The moments
Kenya Hara's timeline.
The 1950s
Born in Okayama
Everyday. Okayama prefecture, 1958.
The 1980s
A masters, and a job
Milestone, and it changed everything. One school, one company, straight from the other.
The 1990s
The Olympic programmes
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The first work most people outside Japan saw.
Signs in a hospital
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A hospital, which is the hardest place to sign well.
Design new things, or look again at old ones
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: point everybody at the boring objects, taken, or keep doing the prestige work. The exhibition toured eight cities on four continents, and he became art director of Muji the following year.
The 2000s
Re-Design
Milestone, and it changed everything. Thirty two of the best designers in Japan, given boring objects.
What he said it was for
Milestone, and it changed everything. His own sentence for the whole idea.
Art director of Muji
Milestone, and it changed everything. The hardest test of his own argument, and he took the job.
A professorship
Milestone, and it changed his direction. He went back to teach where he had studied.
Haptic
Milestone, and it changed everything. Design something by how it feels, not how it looks.
Expo posters, and a museum
Milestone. A world fair, a museum and a department store.
A fragrance with Kenzo
Milestone. The Muji art director, doing a perfume.
The 2010s
Designing Design, and White
Milestone, and it changed everything. Two books the field argues with rather than skims.
Architecture for dogs
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A serious exhibition about kennels, in eight cities.
The 2020s
A square becomes a squircle
Milestone, and it changed everything. He rounded the corners of a square, and the internet lost its mind.
He still art directs Muji and still teaches at the university that trained him. What he set moving is a question the field now asks routinely and had largely stopped asking: not what could we make that is new, but what is already in every house that nobody has looked at properly.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
His turned on an exhibition about objects so ordinary nobody had looked at them in years. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Kenya Hara: frequently asked questions
What people ask about his line.
What is Kenya Hara's character arc?
What is Re-Design by Kenya Hara?
Is Kenya Hara the art director of Muji?
What books has Kenya Hara written?
What is Haptic by Kenya Hara?
Did Kenya Hara design the Xiaomi logo?
Where does this timeline of Kenya Hara's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with his.
Sources
- Kenya Hara, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Designing Design, and White, his books on design theory and aesthetics.
- His own statement of the purpose of Re-Design, as quoted there.
- The exhibition records for Re-Design, Haptic, Tokyo Fiber and Architecture for Dogs.