Top designers from the Sapporo-based design studio harmonica bdlg held a creative collage workshop at the iSummit. Read on for more.

“Long time ago, there was a beautiful princess. As her beloved mother, the queen, had disappeared, the king took a new bride in order to console his grieving daugher. However, one day the princess caught a glimpse of the new queen in her private quarters, only to find out she was not a human after all, but an all-devouring monster! As soon as the monster saw her, the poor princess was swallowed in whole. What adventures might the princess face within the magical realm of the monster’s huge stomach?”

This small fairytale was set the stage for an unorthodox design task: To tell the story of the devoured princess by making a collage of a set of predesigned graphical elements. The elements had been meticoulusly crafted by the harmonica team using only radicals – short brushstrokes which form the sino-japanese characters. The designs were then printed onto bags for the participants to take home. At the end of the workshop the participants discussed each the designs and explained the stories expressed in their works. The harmonica-team selected their personal top two designs and awarded their creators with a small gift.


image: design elements made of kanji radicals