MICHAEL JOHNSON AND UNIQLO

VGT 204 Design Based Writing

Universiti Sains Malaysia

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, consumer’s desired requirements towards brand of clothing is getting
higher. Customers nowadays always persue about the products quality, comfort, price,
functional and aesthetic look. UNIQLO is a clothing apparel company, which was originally
founded in Yamaguchi, Japan in 1949 as a textiles manufacturer. Everyone knows Uniqlo as
it is the world’s third largest retailer for clothing brand. Michael Johnson, a graphic designer
had spent a lot of time traveling to Japan just because he fascinated with Japan and its
cultural. Although he staying in Japan for a long time but he still can’t read the language
fluently. He was frustrated by his inability to read Japanese. In the end, Michael Johnson and
his team at johnson banks have been trying to design a katakana typeface that has english
phonetic sounds embedded. This is how phonetikana was created.

Keyword: Michael Johnson, Uniqlo, Japan, Katakana, typeface, phonetikana

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Japanese language had been list into one of the hardest language to learn by Foreign Service
Institute (FSI) in United State. Michael Johnson was fascinated by Japan for quite some time.
In 1980s, he went to Japan as a young freelancer for the first time and at that time he noticed
that there was little potential to engage with the local visual culture. He then spent some time
as an exotic resource in Tokyo, turning out to be a “gaijin” which means foreigner and do
design on demand for a large advertising agency.

In 2003, Michael Johnson went back to Japan after 15 years to give a seminar at the
British Embassy in Tokyo. Shortly after this visit, an exhibition of his work in Japan resulted
rise in a series of projects that integrate the two cultures.
 The combination of western and Japanese identity makes play with double images
that make visual rhymes between photos of everyday things and the other-worldly content of
the observatory’s museum. For Johnson Banks, the integration between western and Japanese
characters has becoming a trend. On business trips to Japan, Michael Johnson says that he did
like to always try figure out how to say stuff that he saw and try to pronouce each characters.
His Japanese friends will always correct and teach him for the correct pronounciation of
Japanese.

Michael Johnson also mention that It was a hard experience of struggling gamely with
the language that prompted him to start work on a speculative project, a ‘typeface’ that would
combine both sets of characters and would also aid understanding which acting as a phonetic
aide-memoire for anyone learning the language.

By having odd idea, this Anglo-Japanese typeface which is Romatakana and

Phonetikana has gone through several evolutionary stages and finally a mashed-up language
was designed by Michael Johnson with the assistance of Japanese-American designer Miho
Aishima at Johnson Banks.

INTRODUCTION TO THE DESIGNER

Michael Johnson is a world-renowned British graphic designer and author. He was born in
Derby, England in 1964. In 1992, he founded his design studio name Johnson Banks in
London, Uunited Kingdom.

After Michael Johnson set up the company in 1992, he went on to advise and create
brands for clients across the globe including Virgin Atlantic, Science Museum (UK), Shelter
(UK), The Guggenheim Foundation (New York, USA), Sendai Space Observatory (Japan)
and Pew Center for Arts and Culture (Philadelphia, USA). Besides that, Johnson has designed
various posters and stamps including a set celebrating The Beatles for Royal Mail in 2006.

For over a decade, Michael Johnson has been a regular speaker at the world’s design
and branding conferences. He has given keynotes four times at Typo Berlin, spoken three
times at Brand New conferences in the USA and Europe, twice at Kyoorius Design Yatra in
India, and moderated the event once. He has presented at What Design Can Do in
Amsterdam, judged its refugee challenge competition and conducted lecture tours across
India and China.

Michael Johnson has been an external examiner in education field for two decades.
He works in Glasgow School of Art, Kingston University and the London College of
Communication. He is an Honorary Fellow at Ravensbourne College and helped the RCA to
re-validate their communications course in the late 1990s.

Michael Johnson has judged design competitions from San Francisco to Beijing, and
been a D&AD judge eight times, four times as foreman. He was a member of the D&AD
Committee for four years before serving as its President in 2003. His major project during his
presidency was the inception and co-curation of Rewind, a celebration of forty years of
D&AD, which became an exhibition at the V&A and a Phaidon book of the same name.

The Independent Newspaper selected him as one of the 10 most notable British
Designers and The Guardian Newspaper named him as one of the UK’s top 50 designers. The
Guardian also described him as ‘bright, fluent, relentlessly articulate’, and Design Week said
‘Johnson has a knack of being able to distil the complex, diffuse or workaday down into
simple, intelligent, witty messages’. In the late nineties, The Sunday Times described
Johnson as ‘The Government’s favourite designer’. He has been named ‘One of Europe’s
finest graphic designers’
ACHIEVEMENT IN CAREER
Over Michael Johnson’s career, he has won different kind of awards and recognition. He won
most of the design world’s most desirable bits of wood and metal and for the D&AD Awards,
he was awarded the Gold D&AD’s Presidents Award in 2017, seven D&AD Silver Awards
in different years, one D&AD Gold Award for ‘Fruit & Veg Stamps’ and a further five
nominations, three commendations and fivety more design ‘In-book’ for D&AD.

For the Design Week Awards, he had won thirteen Design Week Awards including
Best of Show in 2004. In Design Week Creative Survey, he was awarded first place most
creative UK design company in the 1999 and 2004, first place overall in Top 50 creative
companies in the UK in 2005 and first place for both Print and Corporate Identity in 2006.
Besides, he was awarded with Art Directors Club of New York Awards.

Michael Johnson had successful having his own solo exhibitions which are ‘Words
and Pictures’, the design work of Michael Johnson and johnson banks at Creation Gallery
Ginza, Japan in 2004 and Arkitypo at the Arup Phase 2 space, London in 2012. He also had a
lot of group exhibitions such as D&AD Awards Exhibitions, Creation Gallery group shows,
What Design Can do and more.

THE FAMOUS DESIGN OF MICHAEL JOHNSON

Michael Johnson's project is to create a 'phonetic typeface' which is in Aglo-Japanese form so
that English speakers can understand about Katakana pronunciation more easily. Johnson
Banks teams believes that an iconic brand should offer the product or service itself, the
setting in which it appears, its voice tone and so on.

Michael Johnson called the first version of design as Romatakana. This is because
each character embeds a Latin letter in the thick part of the stylised katakana glyph. He said:
‘It looks beautiful, but doesn’t tell you how to say it’. After their second attempt for the
design, Michael Johnson name it as Phonetikana, which shows the English reader how to
pronounce each Japanese character, with phonetic syllables such as ‘hoh’, ‘shee’ and ‘koo’.
The design concept is bringing out to audience that ‘you don’t even have to learn the shape to
know the way of proonunciation of Katakana’.

Michael Johnson had render ‘Uniqlo’ in the form of Phonetikana typeface. By using
this, people can just see the four characters in the Japanese version of the Uniqlo fashion logo
read ‘yoo’, ‘nee’, ‘koo’, ‘roh’ and read the katakana for Pecha Kucha is ‘peh’ ‘chee’ ‘ya’
‘koo’ ‘chee’ ‘ya’. This creation was already a world-class product.

Meanwhile, Michael Johnson continues his speculative work to make a phonetic

typeface in mashed-up languages. These mashed-up language can be find all over the world
such as Africa, Malaysia, and especially Japan. For example, Uniqlo is a fantastic example.
The origin of where ‘UNIQLO’ name come from is just the combination of ‘unique clothing’.

CONCLUSION

In the conclusion, Michael Johnson and uniqlo had take its contribution to the community.
Even though it only put forward as a research idea, Phonetikana had bring a lot of covenient
and increadible effect in the design industry. It was nominated for best typeface at D&AD in
2010 and in turn influenced our next Asian type project. The innovation of Phonetikana had
given many careers available and creativity of works seems to be on the rise. Michael
Johnson’s life experience taught us to often beyond the limits of the program, risks are being
taken in new projects. The role of the designer when designing new products is to clearly
communicate the advantages of a product and bring them to a better understanding. Michael
Johnson and his design typeface Uniqlo successfully make a lot of people more understand
with the exposure of phonetic typeface.
 REFERENCES

About Michael Johnson: British graphic designer (1964-) | Biography, Facts, Career, Wiki,
Life. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://peoplepill.com/people/michael-johnson-8

About Michael Johnson | Johnson Banks. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/about/michael-johnson

About Uniqlo | UNIQLO. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.uniqlo.com/eu/en/company/

Eye Magazine | Feature | Character studies. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/character-studies

johnson banks: phonetikana. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.designboom.com/design/johnson-banks-phonetikana/

Michael Johnson | Now Try Something Weirder | CreativeMornings/BER. (n.d.). Retrieved

from https://creativemornings.com/talks/michael-johnson

Why UNIQLO is so popular?. (n.d). Retrieved from

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-UNIQLO-so-popular

Designboom. (n.d). interview with michael johnson of johnson banks on the role of graphic
design. Retrieved from
https://www.designboom.com/design/interview-michael-johnson-johnson-banks-graphic-
design-06-15-2015/