Made in Japan

An immersive visual journey through the golden age of graphic design in Japan, told through posters. Curated posters from the Merrill C. Berman Collection run the gamut from century-old to recent design.

Our exhibition design took inspiration from geometric shapes found in Nihon Buyö poster designed by Ikko Tanaka—a godfather figure in Japanese graphic design history. We wanted an immersive motif to accentuate the posters and create a visual through-line for all the posters designed in the last century.

A triptych of oversized title walls unfurls like a Japanese folding fan to greet you at the entrance while allowing a permeable exhibit space that can take you in and out of the exhibit timeline seamlessly.

We chose color hues that serve as thematic backdrops for each section of the gallery. These vivid colored shapes started small but quickly become larger as one progresses through the exhibit until they become larger than the gallery walls.

Oversized typography inspired by lettering found on the ships that brought Japanese immigrants to the American continent infuses a sense of industrialization and globalization to the exhibit, two forces that greatly influenced the evolution of graphic design in Japan.