First Page of the Shiseido's Home Calendar 1931 - By Fumio Yamana Ayao

This graphic design piece was created by Fumio Yamana Ayao for Shiseido's 1931 Home Calendar. This piece is the first page of the calendar.  This image was scanned from page 119 of the book Japanese Modern: Graphic Design Between the Wars by James Fraser, Steven Heller, and Seymour Chwast at Temple University Japan City Campus library in Tokyo, Japan. 

The company Shiseido was established in 1872 as a Western-style dispensing pharmacy in Japan. Then, from 1916 to 1926, the company shifted from pharmacy to cosmetics (Shiseido Company Information), which explains why this image shows a woman posing with makeup on rather than pharmacy products.

Fumio Yamana Ayao was an illustrator and graphic designer. He was born in Hiroshima in 1897. He joined Shiseido in 1929 and left in 1932, a year after creating this illustration for the company. However, this was not the end of his time with Shiseido. He returned in 1936- 43 and again in 1943 as an Advertising and Culture Department consultant. In 1959, he became an advisor to Shiseido.  Before he died in 1980, Yamana established the News Technology Research Society in 1940 and the Japan Advertising Art Association in 1951 (PLAT). 

Sources:

Fraser, James, Steven Heller, and Seymour Chwast. Japanese Modern: Graphic Design between the Wars. Chronicle Books, 1996. 

Fumio Yamana | NPO Architectural Thinking Platform PLAT | PLAT

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