Haruka Misawa has the temperament of a Japanese craftsman, shy and not good at boasting, but her dazzling resume is already her best endorsement.

Haruka Misawa graduated from Musashino Art University in 2005 with a degree in Craft and Industrial Design. After leaving the Sato Grand Design Studio (nendo), she worked at the Japan Design Center's Hara Design Institute, founded by Japanese design master Kenya Hara, since 2009, and founded the Misawa Design Research Office in July 2014 and continues to work in design. Since winning the Japan Association of Graphic Designers (JAGDA) Newcomer Award in 2017, Haruka Misawa has grown to become one of the most sought-after designers in Japan in just a few years. In the years since, Haruka Misawa has won major domestic and international design awards including the 2019 Tokyo ADC Award, the 2019 Mainichi Design Award, the 2020 Japan Graphic Designers Association Award, and the 2022 Maison&Objet Paris Emerging Talent Award.

Haruka Misawa was born in Gunma Prefecture, Japan in 1982. Her grandfather was a dyer of Isezaki Minsen silk and her father was an arts and crafts teacher, so she grew up in an environment where she was in close contact with "creators". This laid the foundation for her later work in a variety of creative fields. At a time when graphic designers are expected to play an active role in various creative fields, Haruka Misawa's designs have been created in a variety of fields, including graphic design, product design, and architectural space design, creating new forms of work in an experimental spirit, resulting in one masterpiece after another.

Haruka Misawa's most famous work was the "Takeo Paper Exhibition" in 2014. This exhibition is known for exploring the fascinating roots of paper and its possibilities. In the exhibition, fine and delicate paper flowers are scattered on a thin, snowy white surface. Along with the flow of visitors, the flowers tremble and sway slightly, seemingly creating a gentle breeze. This work, in which a pen-knife is used to cut a roll of colored paper to create petal-like confetti, is called "Paper Flower. It was created by Haruka Misawa, who was then a member of the Kenya Hara Design Institute. The design with a large amount of white space makes the viewer want to see the dense and lush world under the paper plane, which perfectly fits the theme of this exhibition "SUBTLE". Using an everyday approach, Haruka Misawa shows the beauty of the subtle inlay in a small way.

One of her early works in the field of graphic design is the "Summer Night Zoo" poster for the Ueno Zoo in Japan. During the summer, the zoo's opening hours are extended to 8:00 at night for a designated period. In 2014, Haruka Misawa collaborated with renowned photographer Shu Yokonami, who is known for his detailed depictions, to create a visual poster conveying the night and animals, which has been the most eye-catching visual image of the Ueno Zoo in summer for the past five years. The following year, Haruka Misawa designed the annual image poster for the Ueno Zoo based on the concept of "Ueno Planet". Because Ueno Zoo is the first public zoo in Japan and the oldest and most famous zoo in the country, Haruka Misawa understood Ueno Park, with its 400 species and 3,000 animals, as a planet with a diverse ecology. The 50,000 free copies of the leaflet and the design created a lot of buzz as soon as it was released, and the concise and detailed presentation brought a fresh and modern atmosphere to the park, which is steeped in history. The design was also awarded the 2017 Japan Graphic Designers Association Newcomer Award for Haruka Misawa.

In addition to graphic design, Haruka Misawa's experimental spirit is also reflected in space. Inspired by her past experience of keeping ornamental fish, she started the Waterscape project. Using 3D printing, Mizusawa puts artificial materials such as nylon into the fish tank and adds a quantity of air. Through a perfect balance of gravity and buoyancy, the air makes the green plants grow and the plants become food for the fish, thus creating a simple ecosystem. This is a research and experimental design to build a world in water mainly by combining two simple substances, "container" and "water". Through the control of buoyancy and gravity, we explore the ecology of water-dwelling creatures and present it in the form of a work. In an interview, Misawa said, "I believe that only through such experiments can I achieve more fruitful results in the future. For me, experimentation is simply the seed of the future. It may not be necessary now, but it may be something that is definitely needed in the future." Kenya Hara said of Haruka Misawa, "From the moment she appeared, I thought she had excellent talent. The "water scenery" seems to be the seed of future exploration, allowing Misawa to realize her experimental spirit in various creative fields and feed it back into her works.

Equally exciting is the "Swirling Flowers" designed for the inauguration ceremony of Kofukuji Temple in Tokyo. In Japanese temples, the ceremony is accompanied by the scattering of flowers. In the early days, flowers were often used, but gradually, lotus-shaped colored paper was used instead. The "whirling flowers" are constructed in such a way that when the paper is scattered or fluttered in the air, it swirls and creates a three-dimensional effect like a flower blooming in the air. In the process of production, Haruka Misawa also took into account the convenience of use and used a folding structure so that anyone can easily use it according to the instructions.

In 2018, Ginza-Plane-Gallery (ggg), which is considered a hall of fame in the field of graphic design in Japan, held a solo exhibition, "続き", for Haruka Misawa, where she exhibited her masterpieces such as "Waterscape," a 3D printed nest for a pet fish, and "Planet Ueno," a visualization of Ueno Park. "The exhibition also revealed the failed attempts behind the creation of the works. In this small world of clear lines and staggered displays, we can see the delicate and soft way of thinking of Haruka Misawa and her free and persistent exploration of the carrier "paper". About the exhibition, Haruka Misawa says, "Countless images and ideas disappear or reappear. Design possibilities emerge one after another when looking at familiar landscapes and things that have been scrutinized or searching for a hidden principle. Experimenting with ideas and concepts from different fields sometimes reveals the unknown." And the figurative form of that unknown is being presented to the viewers in the venue through the works, releasing the future of the present. But she is not satisfied with this: "In this regard, although the works have been completed and exhibited, there is always a desire to make them more interesting. Through this exhibition, I want to cultivate research that is like a lifelong career in the medium to long term. Because there is a power that can only be expressed through continuous accumulation."

Article Source:艺术与设计

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