The overall visual theme was to change the bright and cheerful image of the museum formed by its natural surrounding, solid stone construction, and spacious areas, to “cheerful grandeur,” and this new theme was widely incorporated from the symbol and logo to the stationary, shop packaging materials, and signs in the museum. For the renew conditions, the museum at first wanted to use the existing symbol unchanged because it was known for it’s illustration of the characteristic twin towers structure, but an illustrated symbol lacked the versatility required for a museum that holds a variety of exhibitions, so to resolve this issue we proposed creating a concise and impressionistic hybrid single character symbol that merges the Chinese character for river, which is the first character in the name Kawamura, with the letter M, which is the first letter in the word museum. To meet the museum’s requirements, we continued to incorporate the twin towers by using them as a silhouette for the character, and this design was adopted by the museum.

The symbol was developed based on a bold typeface used in European fonts called Frutiger Condensed Bold. The symbol was designed as a single character using the same typeface as the logo to create uniformity between the symbol and the logo. Regular bold fonts use thick lines to create a stable, sturdy image, but they can also transmit a heavy, dark feeling, but this typeface has concise lines without stiffness that gives a bright, buoyant impression. We referred to the superb brilliance of the Frutiger typeface design when developing the symbol to develop a Japanese language logo and pictogram that maintain the look of that typeface. The signature modified from the thick and clear elements expresses the museum’s image of being solidly set in the ground amidst natural light, and this is being used on shopping bags, stationary, and elsewhere to transmit the message that the surrounding natural environments is one of the merits of the museum.

The signage system, which was being worked on at the same time as the building expansion construction, provided us with the opportunity through the “Space VI” proposal to comprehensively supervise the design from the large information board at the entrance to the small art work captions. The main purpose of signs is to provide information, but we also focused on the fact that the signs are like wallpaper placed across the space that leads from the entrance to the hallways and exhibition rooms, so we tried to nurture an “cheerful grandeur” visual element to make the space more homogeneous and give it personality.

The “cheerful grandeur” sign graphic that we developed under the concept called “Space VI” not only uses thickness to increase the visibility by adding some contrast to the space, but thick-lined pictogram drawn like a rough 8-bit image adds friendliness and is liked both in-house and out. This memorable project also received some specific praise, such as the SDA Grand Prize.

Yoshiaki Irobe
Born in Chiba in 1974. Joined Nippon Design Center after completing a Master’s degree at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2003. Worked for a time in the Hara Design Institute, and now works in a broad range of two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and space design including VI, SP tools, package design, event graphics, and signage. Received the SDA Sign Design Grand Prize in 2008, the JAGDA Award, JAGDA New Designer Award, and ADC Award in 2009.