At the same time, another issue for this website renovation was how to ensure that viewers around the world would understand the intention on the business side to make Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea an island of nature and culture that can be presented proudly to the world.

The specific approach which we proposed was to use a highly detailed map which fully incorporates the unique characteristics of the island so that the viewers could understand the locations where these art activities take place, and then have the viewers move from that map to each of the individual information pages.

The designers used a variety of materials and reworked the map numerous times as they sought to create an ideal map expression in just the right amount of detail. For just the coastline alone, the expression of the line should be very different depending on whether the coast at that point is a port, a beach, or a rocky shore. However in the map data which was immediately available and in Google Maps, the boundary between island and sea was not rendered in fine detail, and in the end they pasted together aerial photographs issued by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan and drew from them. By drawing the coastline in realistic detail, the designers succeeded in creating a vivid and exciting map.

However we needed more than just pretty graphics, and we conducted a trial-and-error process over and over again in order to give the interface an enjoyable feel. For example, with the animation when the map was zoomed, we felt that if the map was zoomed instantaneously, there was no feeling of scale with the Seto Inland Sea, which we thought unsuitable for Naoshima. However making the zooming movement too slow causes stress to the viewer. After first adding production effects which properly suited the image of Naoshima to these animations and screen transitions, we then searched for a middle ground where the results could also function as a website.

The results were used in the animation on the top page which zooms in from a world map to Naoshima in order to express the idea of “the world to Japan, Japan to the Seto Inland Sea, and the Seto Inland Sea to Naoshima,” in the map of Naoshima after the animation stops that contains the menu functions, and in the interface to provide seamless transitions to each of the individual facility pages.

After the site was released, the Setouchi International Art Festival was scheduled to be held in 2010. This will be a global-scale art festival which centers on Naoshima and utilizes as its stage a broad art zone in the Seto Inland Sea that includes Toyoshima, Inujima, Shoudoshima, Ogijima, Megijima, Oshima, and a part of Takamatsu City. For this event, the same map-based navigation design will be applied on a new level utilizing next-generation electronic platforms.

The Hara Design Institute is in charge of visual communication design for the Setouchi International Art Festival, and the map navigation which we created the basis for with the Naoshima Art Site will play an important role for this event as well.

This is a unique style of viewing art which involves multiple ferries and walking from island to island to visit the desired art sites. The key point needed for it to succeed is determining how to most efficiently generate an understanding of the art zone geography and provide the information needed for visitors to move from site to site. The goal of information design is to generate independence and activity in people.

As our industry shifts toward tourism, for which the lands of Japan are the resources, a new issue for design will be composing a highly efficient information architecture for large-scale areas such as art festivals and national parks. This series of work represents the beginning of this process.

Keita Suzuki
Born in 1974. Web director. Became involved with website construction in 1997, and worked with Kinotrop, Jaythree, and other web production teams before joining NDC in 2005.