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“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde

Designer Kenya Hara visits Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book “Designing Design.” This event took place on September 29, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he impresses upon the reader the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work: Hara for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998.

In 2001, he enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably molded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since. Kenya Hara, alongside Naoto Fukasawa one of the leading design personalities in Japan, has also called attention to himself with exhibitions such as “Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century” of 2000.

Kenya Hara (born 1958) is a graphic designer, Professor at the Art University Musashino and communication advisor for MUJI.

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realised it sooner.” – Colette

“Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come.” – Janet Erskine Stuart

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.” – Tallulah Bankhead

“My favourite thing is to go where I’ve never been” – Diane Arbus

Obama, in response to Republican’s comments on his budget: “I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory… because as I recall, I’m inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from them.” – President Obama