Design, it seems, is not only becoming more methodical but also more scientific. This is not surprising. Design as a discipline has moved from “product beautification” to being a central part of product development. It has incorporated methodologies from human-computer interaction, sociology, and anthropology as well as advertising and management. And with the rise of design thinking, a wider range of professional disciplines are using creative methods.
I don’t want to criticize design methodologies. But against the backdrop of an overly structured design process, it is important to remind our community that there is one fundamental aspect to design that cannot be formalized in a methodology. And that is intuition.
Morioka Shoten is a tiny bookstore of “a Single Room with a Single Book” in Tokyo. It sells only one book; more precisely, multiple copies of one title that changes weekly, with a small book-inspired art exhibition on the walls.
Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single book
available at a time, for six days.
Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single room
with an event to gather every night.
Morioka Shoten,
a single room with a single book
The logo consists of a rhombic geometry which was inspired by Morioka’s drawing which he brought to the first meeting with Takram. During the process of design development, the team explored many different shapes and motifs other than the rhombic, but in the end came back to the very origin. In fact, the rhombic shape embraces two meanings, “an open single book” and “a single small room”. The first message was the vision team shared through the design process, and the second message was later proposed by Takram in order to make the geometry more connected to the character of the space, which Morioka often emphasised unconsciously.