PLIS ET PLANS

Katsumi Komagata is an award-winning Japanese graphic designer, working with his company ONE STROKE in Tokyo, Japan.

Born in 1953, Katsumi Komagata spent five years working as a graphic designer in New York where he won the ADC silver award in 1982. One year later he returned to Japan and set up on his own with ONE STROKE in 1986.

Inspired by the development of his baby daughter, in 1990 Katsumi began creating sets of visual games on folding cards (the series Little Eyes), playful card games for babies and toddlers to stimulate their curiosity and, by using his books, to encourage fun interaction between parent and child. These were soon followed by many other storybooks, using various paper textures, colour and cut-out shapes to draw the reader into a three-dimensional paperworld full of discoveries and surprises. Reading his books becomes a tactile as well as a visual experience, for book art enthusiasts as much as for parents sharing the book with a child.

Since 1997 Katsumi regularly holds exhibitions, talks and workshops in many countries, particularly Japan and France. Katsumi is especially interested in encouraging creativity in children and communication between parent and child, so he devised a series of creative workshops for children. Katsumi won a price for creativity in Paris and the Special Award for New Art at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair in 2000. In 2006 he won the Tokyo Design Award for his communication designs in the childrens hospital in Kyushu.

In 2003/2004 he developed the concept of the book as an experience further by creating tactile books for visually impaired people. Apart from books, Katsumi Komagata also works on other graphic design projects and has developed a large range of exquisitely crafted three-dimensional collages, so-called popscopes.

Katsumi Komagata's books have only recently been introduced to the UK but have already found their way into major museum and library collections here.

More information on the background of Katsumi's work can be found at http://english.palazzoesposizioni.it/resources/Didattica/Pdf_immagini/KK_e.pdf