Vitamins for Life: The Power of Colour & Pattern

You originally wanted to study graphic design but ended up studying textiles at Tama Art University. Looking back, do you think that unexpected route shaped the designer you became?

When I first entered university, I wasn't particularly interested in textiles, so I can't say I was a very dedicated student at the beginning. But during those four years, I discovered Scandinavian textiles and also met a professor I greatly admired, whose studio I would eventually join after graduating.

What attracted me wasn't so much the materiality of textiles or the texture of weaving, but the idea of "surface design" that this professor advocated. Gradually, I became absorbed in textile and pattern design approached from a more graphic design perspective.

Looking back, I think both my original interest in graphic design and the unexpected path that led me to textiles have shaped the designer I am today.

What was it about Marimekko and Scandinavian textiles that first captured your imagination as a student?

I first discovered Marimekko in an article in an international magazine at my university library. There was a photograph of fabric printed with huge areas of colour, almost spilling out of the frame, simply hanging outdoors and moving in the wind. At the time I was very interested in graphic design, and I remember being shocked by it — I thought, "I had no idea textiles could be like this."

Later, I became fascinated by the way a pattern printed on a piece of fabric can be cropped and transformed depending on how the fabric is used. Unlike a graphic image, which exists within a fixed frame, a textile pattern keeps changing through use. I think that was what really drew me into textiles.

Your work moves so freely between textiles, objects, graphics, spaces, and art. Do you think of yourself primarily as a textile designer, or does that distinction feel less relevant to you now?

In reality, textiles probably make up only about half of my work today. The rest extends across many different fields.

I think of my work as decorating the surfaces of things with colour and pattern. In that sense, the medium being decorated can really be anything.

For now, though, I still call myself a textile designer. Textiles are the field that shaped me, and even today, nothing excites me quite as much as working on a printed textile.

You have described colours and patterns almost as 'vitamins' for everyday life. What do you think modern life is missing when our surroundings become too restrained or neutral?

I don't think there is anything wrong with neutral colours or simple, plain objects at all. But when we choose something based purely on practical conditions rather than whether we genuinely like it or not, I think we tend to choose something safe and neutral — something that makes us think, "This will do."

If we keep making choices like that, the things we have consciously chosen because we really love them gradually disappear from our surroundings. Before we know it, we can find ourselves surrounded by things we neither particularly like nor dislike, and everyday life begins to lose some of its energy.

Choosing something because you genuinely love it creates an attachment to that object. I think the accumulation of these small attachments can become a kind of energy that helps move our lives forward. Perhaps that is why I think of colour and pattern as "vitamins" for everyday life.

Where does your instinct for colour come from? Is it something intuitive, cultural, observational, or a mixture of all three?

For me, colour has a kind of role to play.

I think about how I want someone to feel when they see or use something, because colour can have a powerful effect on our emotions. If you want to relax, for example, very intense colours may not feel right. On the other hand, if you want to lift your mood, vivid colours can give you energy.

I first think about the role I want the design to fulfil, and then I rely on my intuition to decide on the colours.

The combinations are also extremely important. I don't believe there is such a thing as an ugly colour. If a colour looks ugly, I think it is usually the combination that is wrong, rather than the colour itself. So when I put colours together, I suppose I am guided by those same two things: purpose and intuition.

You have said that you are less concerned with the motif itself than with the effect you want a design to create. Could you take us through how that works in practice, what comes first when you begin a new piece?

Of course, with commissioned work there are times when the direction of the motif is specified or when it needs to carry a particular meaning. But when I am designing freely for my own brand, to be honest, I don't think the motif itself matters very much. I might start by sketching something that has stayed in my mind or something I have simply found myself curious about at that moment.

For me, the feeling comes first: "I want to make something like this," or "I want the person who sees this to feel this way." Then I begin fitting the scale of the motifs, the composition and the colours into that initial idea.

It is quite an abstract process, but at the beginning I usually have a kind of scene in my head — something like, "I want to make a design that will be seen in this kind of place, in this kind of way." I use that image as a clue and gradually find my way towards the finished design.

Your work often draws on animals, nature, and the visual world around us, but it rarely feels like straightforward representation. What interests you about transforming something familiar into something unexpected?

The forms we find in nature, as well as the ordinary shapes that surround us in everyday life, are already so beautiful that I don't think I could draw anything that surpasses them.

That is precisely why I don't try to reproduce them as they are. Instead, I might change my point of view, imagine one thing as something else, or isolate just one part of a form. In this way, I try to discover new forms of my own within things that are already familiar to us.

Do you collect images, objects, books, sounds or other things as part of your creative process?

I collect vintage Scandinavian fabrics.

I don't imitate them in my own designs, of course, but printed fabrics made in the past with limited equipment and technology retain a very strong sense of craft that is different from today's industrial products. Looking at them and touching them gives me endless inspiration.

I especially love vintage Marimekko fabrics from the 1950s and 1960s.

You have spoken about your long-standing fascination with Scandinavian design and your desire to work with Scandinavian brands. What do you think Japan and Scandinavia share aesthetically or culturally?

This is just my personal impression, but I feel that the scale of ordinary living spaces in Finland, for example, is somehow quite close to that of Japan.

Within spaces that are not necessarily very large, there is the question of how to introduce decoration and how to make everyday life comfortable. I think there may be something shared in the balance between simplicity and decoration, or perhaps in the way restraint is used.

Visually, of course, Japanese and Scandinavian design can look completely different. But underneath that, I sometimes feel there is a similar mindset about how we want to live.

At the same time, what do you think is distinctly Japanese about your approach to colour, pattern and everyday objects?

This is something I find quite difficult to explain myself, but I explore decoration very deeply in my work, and I'm not particularly afraid of using too much of it. I often use colour and pattern quite boldly.

At the same time, I always want to leave some sense of simplicity. Rather than filling everything completely with decoration, I like the idea that even within something highly decorative, there is still a kind of emptiness or breathing space at its centre.

To be conscious of what is absent while using many things at once — to allow those two seemingly contradictory ideas to coexist within a single design — perhaps there is something distinctly Japanese in that way of thinking.

We live in a culture of constant visual stimulation and fast-moving trends. How do you create work that feels energetic and contemporary without becoming disposable?

I think it is important to be aware of trends. But if you simply adopt them on a superficial level, you will literally be swept along with them, and the work will quickly feel dated.

What matters is understanding the context: why is this particular thing becoming popular now? What changes in society or in people's sensibilities have brought it about? I think it is important to understand that context, interpret it in your own way, and then create something based on your own point of view.

I believe that if enough time and thought have gone into an idea, and there is genuine energy and commitment behind the making of it, the result will not simply become something disposable.