||||| Publication -Reproduction Edition

Visual Impact and Distinctive Touch

The size of this Reproduction Edition submitted is made as big as Original Edition ( 42cm x 59.4cm) to preserve the original's striking impact. We chose mat finish papers over the glossy counterparts often used for photo albums as through the distinctive sense of touch, they'd convey the theme of "One Hundred Years of Idiocy" better, we believe. For the text (essay/ column) pages, we gave the background vintage finish. To make letters look as if they are "written with ink and pen" instead of just "printed", we treated them as "images". "Pictograms" were designed to symbolize contents (water, air, earth etc.). Uniquely designed, they save our BOOK from becoming another text book on history, keeping the balance of "heavy (theme) and light (design)". All our effort entitled us as the winner of 2002 Tokyo Art Directors Club Award, the highest graphic-design award in Japan.

Art Director, Naoki Sato's comment: We have gone through tens of thousands of pictures to choose 100 visuals. The task deprived us of our energy completely. Gradually, however, we became accustomed to facing the mountains of visuals of idiocy, which is actually very scary. We are yet to find the way to solve and prevent all such problems. But we need to. We worked on this project facing all these self-questioning, how and what we can express next. We still feel the same way.