Unique Minds 13: Takashi Murakami

Alright, so I visited the place where I'm hoping to get the t-shirts printed and should be getting prices for the printing, embroidery, and cost of the actual t-shirts on Monday. After that its just a question of paying and so the t-shirts should be ready within a month- very likely before that. I just want a sample so bad so I can take some pictures and hopefully even get a video produced. It's exciting but also scary, I'm just hoping I can sell them all and then focus on upcoming collections with more certainty, but yeah nothing is certain. I've postponed the release of the caps intentionally so they will release alongside the t-shirts. I need to order the packaging this week really. I've got so many ideas which I want to make a reality.

This week I'm talking about the Tokyo-born designer and artist, Takashi Murakami. Takashi has covered basically every creative corner of the world, he's done contemporary art, toys, animation, fashion, music, various forms of merchandise and more.

He always had an interest in anime and manga and wanted to go into the animation industry. He originally studied animation but changed to a more traditional form of Japanese painting which he got a Ph.D. in. However, as time past and his tastes changed he became more and more interested in contemporary art, politics and pop culture. So he created his art more about the social state of Japan at the time and creating and incorporating different characters (such as mr.DOB) which would go on to recur in many of his artworks. He almost took what made contemporary artists in the west at the time so popular (like Andy Warhol) and evolved what they were doing into his own, distinctly Japanese style.

Picture of Takashi holding up a figure of Mr.DOB

He coined the term 'superflat' to best describe his own style and the look of anime and manga in Japan. 'Superflat' is inspired by the art of both anime and manga and includes using bright blocks of colour to create a 2d image. There is often little to no shading and gradients of colour are rarely used. The characters created using this technique often have a thin black outline around them. Could be described as 'psychedelic' or 'trippy' due to the saturated colour pallet and very visually expressive characters used.