Exploring purity within Japanese culture through print.
Typography | Printmaking | Packaging
Purity is a series of posters that explore the ideas of the purity within Japanese culture. By breaking down purity into three core themes of morality, spirituality, and divinity, I was able to create a series of beautifully screen printed posters that explore the symbols that are related to purity within Japanese culture.
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When I began this project, I thought I grasped the concept of death, but the more I learned about different cultures, the more my perspective widened. After researching the idea of symbolic meanings of death, I found a wide variety of symbols within Japanese beliefs. Some of these were in the form of delicate animals, whilst other symbols took the form of architecture.
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The collection of posters was designed not to follow from one to the next but instead stand alone on their own, aside from the introduction poster, which stands by itself through the inverted use of ink. This format allows each symbol of purity to showcase its own story and significance whilst allowing each design to link through colour, typography styles, and material choice.
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I chose to use screenprinting as an ode to the tradition of hand-crafted artwork commonly associated with Japan. This technique allowed me to gain a real understanding and appreciation for crafting something by hand, which involved mixing my own ink, trimming the Japanese paper and creating my packaging solution.
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To protect the posters, I created a robust three-sided box. This allowed for the designs to be kept safe, whilst also becoming an extension of the themes presented in the project. Each side of the box was labelled with one of the keywords that represented purity within Japanese culture, those being morality, divinity and spirituality.
As an easy way to identify the opening mechanism, the word “purity” was screenprinted in Japanese with the same striking red found on the posters, highlighting the link between the use of Japanese typography and the theme.
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