If the term “design criticism” brings to mind long, rambling essays that pale in comparison to their accompanying images and layout—you know, the serious, yawn-inducing stuff most word-averse designers feel duty-bound to plow through anyhow, this crop of recent sites—The Passable Designer, The Message is Medium Rare, and Reading Design—will jolt you out of your endless-scroll stupor and show you how critical writing about design can be smart, funny, and unexpected.
Japanese designer Chihiro Tanaka is a self-proclaimed “Light Couturier” who creates delicately crafted lighting inspired by his training in fashion. Having recently been named a Rising Asian Talent by MAISON&OBJET ASIA, Justin Zhuang finds out how he arrived at the bright idea to blend the craft and techniques of two different disciplines.
How did you go from studying at Japan’s first dress-making school, Bunka Fashion College, to designing lighting?
I have a fairly extensive knowledge of fashion and textile design, so I thought if I could use and apply this expertise in a brand new field that I knew nothing of it would lead to something innovative. Lighting equipment involves work to verify its safety and durability, so entering the market is quite difficult. But that difficulty stimulated my curiosity and I plunged into this unknown world.
The Malaysia Design Archive actually began in Havana, Cuba. In 2007, founder Ezrena Marwan visited the city for the Icograda World Design Congress, where, as she listened to Cuban graphic designers share how they were limited to creating propaganda by their country’s politics, Ezrena was struck by how different it was from her own experience as a graphic designer back home.
“We only design for commercial stuff, and we don’t really pay attention to anything else,” she says. “I was really inspired by how much they think about design, and how much it’s linked to politics and the land.”
She started collecting and documenting everyday graphics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and shared them online. That marked the beginning of the Malaysia Design Archive, a website that traces the history of this Southeast Asian nation through its visual culture.