Graphic Designers on the West Coast

In 1975, Takenobu Igarashi created the poster “Graphic Designers on the West Coast” to promote a publication that introduced American graphic designers to Japanese audiences. Igarashi’s simple composition is enhanced by the sculptural, three dimensional quality of letterforms that playfully refer the initials of the designers’ names featured in the book. Bright colors evoke the warm climate and sunny optimism of the West Coast, a color scheme that most certainly would have stimulated viewers’ curiosity about the American design scene.

After all, 1975 was the year when Igarashi started exploring perspective lettering, which later became his signature design technique. He first employed letters in perspective for the cover of Idea magazine No. 130. Compared to those on his West Coast  poster, produced in the same year, the letters on the magazine cover are far less complex and more solid in form.  Robert K. Brown, the owner of the Reinhold Brown Gallery, points out that Igarashi’s treatment of letters on the magazine cover bears a striking resemblance to a cover design for Broom magazine, designed by the Russian avant-garde designer and artist El Lissitzky in 1922.