I gave a talk with Sakura Nomiyama called “Design & Consumerism of Modern Japan” at Hong Kong’s CHAT @mill6chat on Oct. 19. Within, we looked at the emergence of the department store as a site of consumption in Japan and offered up one particular narrative about the emergence of Westernization.

I presented at TypeCon 2021 on October 21st. A bit about what I presented:

Ghost Story / Love Story (or How I Learned to Love the Dead)
We have all been told that there are things that we are “not supposed to do” regarding design. This is a story about denying that, and both a love story and a ghost story. Or rather, multiple love stories and multiple ghost stories … with surprising outcomes.

This hybrid presentation looks at rare, forgotten, lost, and deceased punctuation marks, then segues into a short jaunt in a time machine back to the 1990s, another hop back to the 1920s, and finishes in the present day in Tokyo.

This presentation will delight those interested in rarified typography, type/design history, the odd romantic, and anyone yearning for a cheeky mystery solved in front of them.

In honor of the Tokyo 2020/21 Olympics, which are currently underway, Bay Area design educators Chris Hamamoto and Jon Sueda have curated the next iteration of the Unrealized Archive series – Unrealized Archive 4: Lost Olympics – a storefront window exhibition at IF/THEN Studio in Berkeley and an accompanying publication to come. The exhibition will be on view for the duration of the Olympic Games Jul 23 – Sun, Aug 8, 2021 and is viewable from the street.

Unrealized Archive 4: Lost Olympics
Jul 23, 2021 – Sun, Aug 8, 2021

Featuring works by: Betsy Bickle, Cyan, Daniel Eatock, Experimental Jetset, Ian Lynam, and Chris Ro


The Tokyo 2020 Olympics was postponed one year ago and is one of the most high-profile global events affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic. On the occasion of the rescheduled games of the XXXII Olympiad set to open on July 23rd, the Unrealized Archive will focus on the unrealized Olympic design of the 20th and 21st centuries. Embodied as a storefront window exhibition and accompanying publication, UA4 will explore unrealized Olympics emblems from host cities not selected, Olympic design discourse, and speculative design for the Olympics. A transnational sporting event, the Olympics is a proxy for establishing countries on a world stage, confirming their status in the commercial world order via architecture, urban planning, and the construction of visual identity. Under the jurisdiction of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a non-governmental sports organization based in Switzerland, countries compete for the right to host the games and navigate global politics for the right to visual representation within them. In UA4 the curators collected graphic artifacts that are the outcome of this tenuous process, symbiotic commercial endeavors, and fictitious responses to the Olympic games.

Unrealized Archive 4: Lost Olympics
IF/THEN Studio
1102 Gilman St.
Berkeley, CA, 94706

I recently gave a lecture in the disruptive and playful 24-hour art and design global lecture marathon Pillow Lava School.

Ian Lynam and Iori Kikuchi picked up a D&AD Pencil for their contribution to the publication LogoArchive Akogare. Check it out here: https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2021/234247/logoarchive-akogare/

I’ve had the extreme pleasure of working with an amazing team at Bunka-Cho, Japan’s Agency of Cultural Affairs over the past year to develop a series of multiplex typographic approaches to a large number of translations of seminal pieces of Japanese art, art history, theory, and criticism. You can check them all out here on the Art Platform Japan website: https://artplatform.go.jp/

As part of the upcoming Spring 2021 Residency, VCFA MFA in Graphic Design is excited to announce our Global Studio Sessions event on April 6th, 7pm EST with featured guests designers!: James Chae, Kaitlin Chan, and Sakura Nomiyama, based in Seoul, Hong Kong, and Tokyo respectively. Ian Lynam moderated the event.

New work: identity for Asano Dental Clinic in Kaminoge, Setagaya in Tokyo.

The identity was a labor of love with polymath producer David Guarino.

Just designed and released: the “10th Anniversary Limited Edition bGeigie” Geiger counter designed for Safecast’s now-decade-long adventures in citizen science.

The 10th Anniversary bGeige features a UV-printed and etched faceplate, as well as interior and rear plates.

Some upcoming events courtesy of VCFA! Email danielle.dahline@vcfa.edu to RSVP!