Street Graphics Tokyo

by Barry Dawson (Editor)

Street graphics have become the visual language of cities. Signs and symbols instruct, inform, portray concerns, and express aspirations. Culturally specific, they are also increasingly universal, always creative, and always fun. Tokyo's vibrant street graphics combine ancient tradition, twentieth-century mass production, and a twenty-first-century urban vision that is uniquely Japanese. A colorful clash of imagery renders the familiar strange and the strange bizarre. Cartoon characters can signify the police or pornography. Fashion statements are derived from diverse sources―ancient Egypt or even a hospital operating room. Slot machines vend erotica; pets and cops are robots; tempting dishes of sushi turn out to be inedible plastic representations. Ridley Scott's futuristic film Blade Runner was inspired by Tokyo's neon nightscape, where a fashionable department store doubles as a giant digital TV screen featuring lifesize dinosaurs in Godzilla's hometown. Barry Dawson's photographic vision of Tokyo forms a creative reference for students and designers, as well as an imaginative, offbeat pictorial guide for visitors and armchair travelers. 150 color illustrations

Genres: Art, Photography

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool pictures but it would have been nice if the author has added any context or commentary other than 'this inspired Ridley Scott's Bladerunner'. Repeated every time there was a spot for a paragraph. There's so many other things to say about Tokyo other than comparing it to Bladerunner every three pages.

[Chris]

If you love Japanese Culture and the visual world they have created for themselves to live in, then this book will help you relive that experience all over again. This book is all photographs of the visual characters they have created, the child-like world they live and innocence of it all.

All the characters you see are the use of childlike imagery, where even the police departments are cartoon mange characters depicted as their mascots. This creates for a free form of living throughout their world.

The sections this book covers is
1. Tradition
2. Signs, Symbols, and Services
3. Food and Drink
4. Fashion
5. Music
6. Sex
7. Digital
8. Nostalgia

Since this is more of a photograph picture book, its easy to sit down and go through it real fast. Lots of cool ideas in there. Wish we had more stuff like that in the US.

[okyrhoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little book is full of color and crazy fun in the daily life of Tokyo. Besides graphics, there are also some photos of 'alternative' youth culture and other aspects of urban modernity in the Japanese metropolis.

It's interesting to see how, for the Japanese, even the sacred (temple offerings) or the profane (porn industry) can become cute. Or it may be pure kitsch.... But at least there is always an attention to making the commonplace colorful and aesthetically appealing.