O tomato Parco（Exhibition, Events, Campaign）
First of all I and the rest of Tomato would like to thank the Tokyo Type Directors Club for kindly bestowing this award on us. We would also like to thank Parco for being so generous in staging the show and thank Takeshi Kajihara for his boundless energy in initiating the project and producing it throughout all of its myriad forms. We would also like to thank Takenobu Igarashi for graciously allowing us to modify his iconic letterforms that he designed for Parco in the early 1980s. To encapsulate 25 years of idiosyncratic energy and to articulate it, so it became a living thing rather than a memorial, is a difficult task and without the help everyone involved, especially Toru Yoshikawa and Koto Nishiyama, the whole enterprise would have floundered.
In all of this madness designing the graphic elements and the typography became a rock of sanity. This process was made both easier and meaningful by anchoring it on Igarashi-san’s original letterforms. The logo that he designed has been, and still remains, an inspiration – especially in it’s neon form on the front façade of the Shibuya building. So, the task was to translate this sign and create a complete alphanumeric set from these letterforms without bastardising its original spirit or form. We wanted the historical antecedence of the original to be abundantly apparent whilst subtlety modifying its form to create a ‘conversation’ between the past & the present and Igarashi-san & Tomato. I only hope we have done it, and Igarashi-san, justice.
John Warwicker
