Graphic design is used throughout society, and while some designs run their course, designs serve as an important record of the visual culture, technology, and ideas of an era. Posters, books, catalogs, signage, visual identity (VI), printed materials, and records of the production process are not merely deliverables. They can serve as a key to understanding the relationship between society and design, and they are cultural memories that should be passed on to the future.
 
Since its founding in 1986, ginza graphic gallery (ggg) has showcased the past and present of graphic design inside and outside of Japan through exhibitions, publications, and lectures. The gallery’s operator, the DNP Foundation for Cultural Promotion, sees its mission as not only exhibiting graphic design, but also recording and preserving graphic design to lay a foundation for future generations.
 
This exhibition looks back at the existing oeuvre of Yoshihisa Tanaka, but it also introduces the visual language that he developed through his ongoing client collaborations, focusing on the form of design that is more than fleeting. Using design materials preserved by businesses and universities, including the Ikko Tanaka Archive managed by the DNP Foundation for Cultural Promotion, the exhibits will examine how design processes and printed materials are preserved, classified, and exhibited. As part of this, Yoshihisa Tanaka is creating new storage containers, display fixtures, and structures for packing up materials using Japanese washi paper, a material that he has been studying for some time. He reimagines elements that ordinarily remain out of sight—the boxes, paper, mounts, classification systems, and display stands that are necessary for the archive’s work—as an exercise in graphic design.
 
An archive is not just a place to lock up the past; it is also a mechanism to open it up to the future. This exhibition does not merely display the accomplishments of graphic design. It is an attempt to think about the cultural value of the act of preserving graphic design and passing it on to future generations.