Nomi
Nomi is a bag from a leathergoods workshop in Aalto University under the direction of Juha Marttila who was the Men’s and Women’s Leathergoods Design Director of Burberry.
Based on the research of brands, we have to get the coherent elements and ideas from some existing products of one brand. In some ways, it is more like a workshop about doing branding researches. The brand I chose is Y-3, a worldfamous sports brand, owning the stylised remarkable Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto. It is such an attractive, futuristic and special example among all the other sports brands in the world. In this project, I was trying to deconstruct the mindset of Yohji and follow up the existing style of this brand’s products.
Everyone knows that Yohji Yamamoto is one of the design masters in the world that using deconstruction as his basic ways of doing design. The image below shows a pair of shoes designed by Yohji Yamamoto from Y-3. As we all understand the definition of deconstruction design, Yohji mainly used lines to cut and divide the surface of shoes then combined with other the parts of soles together. To try to follow the step and keep the same design style from Y-3, I decided to proceed this bag from two directions. First direction is from inspirations from Yohji Yamamoto as a fashion designer in terms of the analysis of Japanese culture. What is for the second one is the brand itself by analysing the future products of Y-3 from my perspective.
Based on the research of brands, we have to get the coherent elements and ideas from some existing products of one brand. In some ways, it is more like a workshop about doing branding researches. The brand I chose is Y-3, a worldfamous sports brand, owning the stylised remarkable Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto. It is such an attractive, futuristic and special example among all the other sports brands in the world. In this project, I was trying to deconstruct the mindset of Yohji and follow up the existing style of this brand’s products.
Everyone knows that Yohji Yamamoto is one of the design masters in the world that using deconstruction as his basic ways of doing design. The image below shows a pair of shoes designed by Yohji Yamamoto from Y-3. As we all understand the definition of deconstruction design, Yohji mainly used lines to cut and divide the surface of shoes then combined with other the parts of soles together. To try to follow the step and keep the same design style from Y-3, I decided to proceed this bag from two directions. First direction is from inspirations from Yohji Yamamoto as a fashion designer in terms of the analysis of Japanese culture. What is for the second one is the brand itself by analysing the future products of Y-3 from my perspective.
From this starting point, the outputs of Japanese culture would be detailed into two parts. One is connected to the material used mainly to describe the feelings of Japan. The another one is where the history is, Japanese bushido culture, which has been used in many ways invisibly.
In the history of Japan, it was in such a long period of time when lacking of living resources. The Japanese people were so clever that they tried their best to find feasible material around themselves to build their home and produce their products. Fibre flax has always been a usual material that used in different ways such as clothing and accessories because of its nice elasticity. People used this elastic flax as elastic bands to wrap up this objects even their body as a protection. This was the starting point of using this elastic bands as what we called, bandages. From here, we have to relate this using way of bandages to the spirit of Japan. That is the representative bushido/ samurai.
BUSHIDO
BUSHIDO is somehow the supporting complex in every Japanese public. This is, when we wish to understand it by language, respectively “Qi” which means justice and rectitude, “Yu” which means valour and courage, “Jin” which means benevolence and compassion, “Rei” which means courtesy and respect, “Makoto” which means honesty and veracity, “Meiyo” which means honour and resolve, finally “Chungi” which represents loyalty and dedication. In this mental system, people do believe that their belly is the most vital part of the entire body where guarding the bushido’s essence. This is why they choose to use bandage to protect their belly and why when they suffer a defeat, they would do Seppuku which is chop from their belly to let their spirit die. In my design, I would try to carry on this form of expression by setting straps or elastic bands on the bag to represent a sense of security because in fact, bags are something that would let you feel safe and your staff in the bag safe. On the other hand, using more this elastic bands as one of the materials for this bag will give users more feelings and connections towards Japanese culture and this sort of association is something subconscious and invisibl
SHURIKEN
Secondly there are also some aspects that can be helpful for us designers to refer on forms and shapes. We have decided the materials and for the next step, I tried a lot to gather different Japanese traditional objects to try to find inspirations from the traditional forms. To associate to the bushido we mentioned above, I also found some objects that can let people think of Ninja or Bushi when looking at it. Shuriken is one of the things I can find. You can define it in a type of arms, tools or equipments. But as a matter of fact, it looks and uses as a type of darts but only for Bushi and Ninja. It has its special and characteristic form for us to refine.
FUROSHIKI
Finally, I refined some inspirations from Japanese traditional way of package which is called Furoshiki. That is a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth traditionally used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. In this way, in the limit of setting weighs, people do not have to use any hardware to help fixing and closing the pack. It is the offspring from the history of Japan when there were no enough production and industry. I referred the way of wrapping stuff and tried to combine all of the aspects above into my bag design.
