MAKOTO SAITO
JAPANESE POSTERS
7th Nov. 2003 till 29th Feb. 2004
mkg-hamburg.de

Since its expansion onto the international stage at the beginning of the 1960s, the Japanese poster has diverged into two very different genres. There are the garish and ostentatious street advertising products, often of gigantic dimensions, which rarely produce anything of great artistic value. Much more interesting are the so-called image posters, posters produced at high cost and in small numbers which are not intended as billboards, but to decorate the boardrooms of companies or as gifts for esteemed business partners.

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fig.: Makoto Saito: jun-men-, 1988

These are shown publicly at special exhibitions, prizes are awarded for the best examples and they reach a wide public as reproductions in magazines. Only a small elite of Japanese graphic designers are considered illustrious enough to be the recipients of the much-coveted commissions for such image posters. Makoto Saito has found his niche here since the early 1980s and realizes between five and ten designs every year. Many of them have been awarded international prizes.