MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

How can art and design simplify our lived experience? This paper explores how visual culture, including graphic design and product branding, can simplify rather than complicate daily life. The work of Japanese designer Kenya Hara, director of MUJI branding, will serve as a model of Zen-inspired graphic design that calms and balances the consumer experience in today’s fast-paced media-saturated world.
Our lives today are flooded with a full spectrum of continuously changing products and mass media; it feels impossible to avoid the inundation of technology and advertising in today’s globalized economy. While technology brings many new possibilities and benefits to our ever-changing world, high-tech products are inevitably a result of ceaseless commercial production. The question facing human beings in this new environment of technology and industry is: “How can we live simply?” The question for designers, therefore, is: “How can we solve that problem?” This paper explores the value and potential of traditional Asian Zen aesthetics in contemporary graphic design. Zen aesthetics originated in Buddhism, yet Zen specifically developed in China during the Tang dynasty as Chán. This paper examines how designers use Chán aesthetics to showcase the natural quality of commercial products, embracing simplicity and tempering technology’s deafening roar. “Simplicity” in Asian culture is achieved by using negative space in design solutions. In Eastern culture, emptiness suggests purity, trust, and nature; aesthetically, a great amount of negative space contrasts with positive space revealing a stronger focal point. Kenya Hara, a Japanese graphic designer for MUJI, offers a case study of a successful and compelling designer embracing Chán Hara brings the traditional Zen aesthetic of simplicity to his design to contrast this complicated world through his minimalist style, naturalistic elements, and spare details. Hara’s minimalist design eases overconsumption; ironically his branding reveals how purchasing well-designed products can simplify our lives.