Seminar with Kashiwa Sato

  I went to the seminar featuring Kashiwa Sato, art director as a speaker, followed by the panel with Heizo Takenaka, professor at Keio University, ex-Minister and Director of Academy Hills.=>For Japanese version.

  I read Kashiwa san’s book last year (in Japanese) and was struck by the way he described the process of designing, as I thought his book was essentially about problem solving. I was very impressed and always wanted to have an opportunity to meet with him in person.  I was fortunate to be given an opportunity to attend Lifestyle Salon series at Academy Hills at Roppongi Hills Library.

  His talk was fascinating as he discussed two projects–one for Uniqlo and the other for Fuji Kindergarten.  I have been always interested in Fast Retailing and even visited their flagship Uniqlo store on Broadway, New York City. (It is quite a store to say the least.)  Kashiwa explained how he came up with the concept, logo, and the way the campaign was planned and implemented before the opening of the store.

 He also explained the project to design a new kindergarten. It was also very interesting and gave me a lot of ideas as to how to design and communicate the concept in the public sector. 

  The talk by Kashiwa san and Takenaka san was also extremely interesting and insightful as they talked about the importance of “getting to the core/essence of things” and “Back to Basics” in fields such as design, politics, etc.

 It was such an exciting and inspiring evening.