Ikko Tanaka was a well-known Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

er.

The characteristic of his designs is a blending of deeply rooted Japanese traditions with western modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 to produce contemporary visual expression.

Ikko Tanaka's work includes the design of the symbols for Expo '85 in Tsukuba and World City Expo Tokyo '96. Amongst others he has worked for the Seibu Saison Group, The International Garden and Greenery Exposition

Expo '90

or The International Garden and Greenery Exposition, organized as a part of the International Expositions Convention, was the first large-scale international gardening exposition in Asia and focused on the theme of the Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind". The exposition was held in...

, Hanae Mori

Hanae Mori

Hanae Mori is a fashion designer in Japan. She is the only Japanese woman to have presented her collections on the runways of Paris and New York, and the first Asian woman to be admitted as an official haute couture design house by the fédération française de la couture in France...

, Issey Miyake

Issey Miyake

is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances.-Life and career:Miyake was born 22 April 1938 in Hiroshima, Japan. As a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. He studied...

, and the Mazda

Mazda

is a Japanese automotive manufacturer based in Fuchū, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.In 2007, Mazda produced almost 1.3 million vehicles for global sales...

 Corporation. Tanaka has curated and designed exhibitions for the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

 (London) and throughout Japan. He has designed the main logo of Osaka University

Osaka University

, or , is a major national university located in Osaka, Japan. It is the sixth oldest university in Japan as the Osaka Prefectural Medical College, and formerly one of the Imperial Universities of Japan...

.

Ikko Tanaka is also credited with developing the Muji

MUJI

, or is a Japanese retail company which sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods.Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy....

 together with Kazuko Koike (marketing consultant), and Takashi Sugimoto (interior designer). Tanaka articulated the Muji vision and appearance, and he provided ideas and prototypes that visualized the design strategy. He worked as Muji

MUJI

, or is a Japanese retail company which sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods.Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy....

's art director until 2001.

Ikko Tanaka has received several awards, including the JAAC Special Selection, Mainichi Design Award, Minister of Education Newcomer Prize, Tokyo ADC Members' Grand Prize, Mainichi Art Award, Purple Ribbon Medal, and the New York ADC Hall of Fame Prize. Tanka has exhibition in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Mexico.

Ikko Tanaka has published several books, including "Design, no Zengo Sayu."

Born in 1930 in Nara City, Ikko Tanaka studied art at the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts. Ikko Tanaka worked at the Sankei Shinbun, Nippon Design Center, and subsequently established his first design studio in Tokyo, the Ikko Tanaka Design Studio, in 1963.

External links

• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td7vq6GbO-o