Designtide Tokyo 2024 Brand Identity

Since it is a design event, we didn’t want to be constrained by a fixed graphic mark. The core idea was to create an interactive visual identity in which every graphic continuously transforms in response to the actions and engagement of the visitors.

Our main focus was exploring how to translate the kind of energy and emotion that can be difficult to convey through digital media alone into something people could physically experience. We wanted to create a three-dimensional, interactive expression that changes depending on the viewer’s position and perspective, allowing people to enjoy the transformation itself while naturally becoming immersed in the experience and discovering something new along the way.

We would like to continue exploring and expanding interactive visual approaches, including scanimation, both in future projects and through our own creative work.

What I believe has not yet been fully recognized is that this project is not merely graphic design utilizing the scanimation technique. Rather, it is designed so that the identity of DESIGNTIDE itself is not a "fixed icon," but a "behavior that shifts in relationship with people."Typically, brand identities are designed to be recognized in a static state, such as through a logo or key visual. In this project, however, the image changes and the experience is realized only through the physical movement of the viewers—such as approaching or moving away. The graphics are not complete on their own; they temporarily emerge through the presence of the viewer.This concept is inherently connected to the name "DESIGNTIDE" and the very nature of the event itself. A tide does not exist from the beginning as a single, completed form. Instead, it gradually takes shape as the small movements and ideas of different people overlap. Therefore, rather than using tides or waves as direct visual motifs, I wanted to turn the very phenomenon of shifting perception through individual action into the expression of "TIDE."During production, instead of simply applying a single visual effect across various media, my team adjusted the design so that the same core concept manifests in different ways depending on the material, scale, viewing distance, and relationship to the space. We sought to establish visual consistency not by repeating the same imagery, but by ensuring that the same underlying principle functions effectively within each unique environment.What I want to convey to the global design community is that this work is not just brand design with an added special visual effect. It is an exploration of how identity manifests when body, time, material, and space are fully integrated. Interaction was not a feature added to a completed graphic; it was the core concept that allowed the identity to exist in the first place.

My choice of an analogue approach was not intended as a countermeasure against digital technology. Rather, through this project, I questioned whether interaction and real-time response are concepts that truly belong only to the digital realm.The graphics shift on the spot in response to physical movement. Although without using sensors, programming, or screens, it functions as a highly direct, real-time system in the sense that different images emerge depending on the viewer’s position, speed, and distance.In digital interfaces, the relationship between input and output is usually controlled by a program running behind the screen. In contrast, within this identity, the viewer's physical body itself becomes the input, and the output is the visual phenomenon generated by the relationship between the slits, the printed image, the light, and the distance. The entire mechanism is laid bare right before one’s eyes, allowing the response to be understood through physical sensation.Furthermore, analogue mechanisms lack the perfect reproducibility found in digital technology. The way the image shifts varies slightly depending on the viewing angle, walking speed, installation environment, and ambient light. I embraced this inconsistency—not as a lack of precision, but as a space where the experience is generated through the relationship between the viewer and the material. Rather than adding complex processing, my team pursued how richly we could connect physical movement with visual change within a set of limited principles.Through this identity, I sought to redefine interaction—not as something tied to a specific technology, but as a relationship that emerges among the body, the material, and the space.

Now that social media has become the primary medium of communication and designers can easily share their work and thoughts individually, I wanted to reconsider the purpose of hosting a physical design event in Tokyo today.A real-life event requires people to physically show up to experience it. Precisely for this reason, I felt there was a need for an experience seen with one’s own eyes and felt with one’s own body—something that cannot be captured by screens or photographs.The graphics I designed for this project shift as viewers approach, walk away, or change their position. Rather than unilaterally presenting information, the visual experience only realizes itself when viewers move and actively discover the changes.While social platforms are vital spaces that connect people and ideas across distances, there are relationships that can only be forged when we place our physical bodies in the same time and space. Just as one person’s movement might prompt another to notice a change in the graphic, individual experiences become gently interconnected within the shared space.Cultural tides do not emerge solely from the broadcasting of completed works or opinions. I believe that the next movement is born from the layering of small, immediate reactions felt on-site,