Oriental Art School
Creative Design Department, Advanced Communication Design Major
Teacher Yuka Kishimoto

Q. What can you learn at Toyo Art School and what is emphasized?

As a school of design and art, Toyo Art School cultivates creators who possess creativity, expressiveness, and interpersonal skills. There are departments specializing in a variety of fields, so you can choose the department that best suits your field of study.
Our school's design department places great importance on students being able to understand and use letters. Letters are the foundation of design and are used in a variety of media. For this reason, we believe that knowledge of letters is essential for designers.

Q. Professor Kishimoto, what are your majors and classes?

I am in charge of the four-year Creative Design Department, Advanced Communication Design major.

This major develops your "power of thought" and allows you to acquire consistent skills from design planning to production. You can learn a wide range of subjects, from the basics of design such as color, shape, and lettering to applied design such as printed matter, advertising, and branding. We aim to nurture modern designers who are involved not only in graphic design but also in planning.

Many of our students have a strong desire to learn a variety of things. Because it's a four-year program, they can study in depth and focus on themselves. Even students who have a wide range of interests and are unsure of what to do can try their hand at a variety of things, and once they find something they like, I think this is a major where they can specialize in more specialized subjects.

The class I teach for first-year students is "Design Seminar," where they learn how to think about design. By thinking about what design is and experiencing the production process, students learn the mindset necessary for production. Because design is often closely related to type, most students use Morisawa fonts for their assignments.

For example, if the assignment is to brand a cafe, students design the entire project, including flyers, menus, packaging, point cards, etc. In class, we teach students to pay attention to the proposal and the typefaces in the headlines and main text.

Q. Why do you want to use Morisawa fonts on your equipment and personal computers?

Morisawa fonts are known for their reliability in typesetting, especially for vertical composition. We introduced them because we thought their history and reliability would enable students to create high-quality designs. As there are many opportunities to use characters in classes and assignments, we have introduced the reliable Morisawa fonts to our equipment and personal computers.

Because a wide variety of fonts are available, I feel it is easy to match the image that students want to create. Personally, I purchased and used these fonts when I was a student, so there are many fonts that I am familiar with.

Q. How do you want students to use fonts?

I hope that students will not only learn famous fonts, but also find fonts that suit their designs and learn how to use fonts to their full potential. I hope that students will use their intuition to broaden their range of expression through a variety of fonts. I also hope that students will grow into designers with a high level of flexibility.

Q. What about works that actually use fonts?

In the third-year book design class for students who have mastered typography, students work in groups on everything from typesetting to binding and public relations. They not only pursue readability, but also consider and create image strategies and situations in which the book will be read.

Fourth-year students take a class called "Magazine Planning and Editing," in which they work in groups to create a magazine.
We create fictional magazines by utilizing a variety of knowledge, including not only fonts but also typesetting and layout.

In the annual industry-academia collaboration class with Morisawa, students from majors that don't usually have classes on typography, such as those studying CG, games, or product design, are also taking part. We hope that this will be an opportunity for them to get up close and personal with typography, and that they will be able to use it in their future graduation projects and portfolios!