TAKESHI OBATA

Takeshi Obata is a manga artist renowned for his books such as Death Note and Bakuman. He’s had a long and fruitful career. His impeccable drawing techniques helped him reach his fame status. As a goal to represent his career and work, the mandate was to create a coffee table book with an elevated sleek design.

Since his work is featured in japanese comic books known as “manga”, I decided to incorporate elements from it. The square format of the book recalls the typical panel shape. The red is directly correlated to Japan and its flag, but also the dark and sometimes violent imagery found in his book. The most obvious aspect is the reading format. Mangas are typically read from right to left, the same goes for this book. Throughout the spreads the paragraphs are numbered to help the reader follow the unusual order of reading. 

Initially, I was not too thrilled by the idea of getting a “mangaka”. I felt like it would be hard to give a rather distinguished and clean look to a more comical, colloquial art style, a style that you can easily see anywhere. The other issue I noticed was the manga fans had done a lot of work in his honour, so finding new ideas was hard. I think I achieved a nice design even with the challenges I encountered.