The Artist Who Invented A New Language Without Words: Mitsuo Katsui
A name that can't be left out when talking about the most influential Japanese graphic designers is Mitsuo Katsui.
He was significantly involved in the creation of the pictograms for the 1964 Olympics, worked with design giants, such as Issey Miyake, and was in charge of a colour guide that became a reference for all Japanese printing companies.
Katsui was born in 1931 in Tokyo and lived through the destruction of his hometown during WWII. He cites that this turning point in history put him on the path of becoming a graphic designer.
After graduating from Tokyo University in 1955, he worked as a graphic designer for the food company Ajinomoto before founding his own company in 1961. Three years later, he participated in producing the design manual for the Olympics, introducing pictograms as an universal language. These were influenced by isotypes that the sociologist Otto Neurath developed in Europe for a better communication method within the multi-lingual continent.
“When you are creating from nothing, you need strength and empowerment within yourself, because you are the one who shapes the future. You need to envision the future. Same applies to the designing process, the power of creating from scratch. I think I naturally learned it from the circumstance I faced at that time.”
Katsui would move on to be the art director of the expo in Osaka in 1970 and the Ocean Expo in Okinawa in 1975. Between 1977 and 1983, he collaborated with 20 designers on an English-language volume covering a wide range of Japanese topics, called the Kodansha encyclopedia.
In 1982, he took part in the International Design Conference at Aspen, where he met Issey Miyake. After Miyake's textile designer saw his design for a book cover, presenting digital patterns Katsui made of film, Katsui was asked to collaborate for Pleats Please, a clothing line specialized in pleats by Issey Miyake.
Before Katsui passed away in 2019, he taught as a emeritus professor at Musashino Art University.
