From July 26 to August 23, 2025, JAGDA, Asia's most influential graphic design organization, will join with Fosun Foundation and the Japan Foundation to bring the exhibition “Yitisiga: Graphic Design in Japan” to the Bund for the first time as part of a China tour. This is the largest, most systematic exhibition of Japanese graphic design in China to date, highlighting more than 300 original works across 1,200 square meters of exhibition space, with five sections presenting landmark works by over 100 legendary figures such as Kenya Hara and Issei Kitagawa. This exhibition attempts to break down the boundaries of traditional design exhibitions, using diverse narrative methods to show how design can respond to constantly shifting social environments and technical challenges.

Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc. (JAGDA), established in 1978, is one of the most influential graphic design organizations in Asia, and the JAGDA Award is the highest accolade in Japanese design, representing the shifting winds of Japanese visual creativity each year. The first exhibition section presents award-winning works by ten leading designers including Kenya Hara's Make the Future Better than Today, Issei Kitagawa’s KAMIZU, and Ryosuke Uehara's Livvera. Works in the second-floor exhibition section span posters, packaging, digital media, signage, and spatial presentation, focusing on the evolution of design amidst social change, and bearing witness to the expanding boundaries of language and medium. Meanwhile, a presentation of the past thirty years of the Graphic Design in Japan yearbook offers viewers a panoramic view of the shifts in Japanese visual language as society has changed. As JAGDA President Taku Satoh says, in this time of the rapid development of AI technology, “how can professional designers and creative directors survive and continue to create value?” This yearbook exhibition can perhaps inspire thinking on these issues.

Issei Kitagawa, winner of the Yusaku Kamekura Award, the highest honor in Japanese graphic design, creates designs with powerful visual expression and strong commercial impact. His company, GRAPH, follows a principle of “compressed design” that emphasizes a unified innovation chain linking material and craftsmanship to communication and social significance. Kitagawa's works embody refined observations of lived experience and profound reflections on social phenomena, beauty mixed with timeless probing of the most fundamental meaning of “design.” As Kiyonori Muroga, former editor-in-chief of idea magazine notes, “Kitagawa’s visualized thinking pursues the possibility of something beyond information—mechanisms for the reestablishment of human relationships. This kind of ‘wild thinking’ is what makes communication design possible.”

On the third floor is a focused presentation of the documentary “25 Conversations Between Chinese and Japanese Designers,” specially devised for this exhibition. This section features conversations between 25 creatives from Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Macau, including not only designers but also curators, artists, university professors and science fiction writers. Each sets out from their own creative experiences and circumstances to provide a frank account of their observations and thinking on issues in contemporary society, technology, and culture. “To bring together 25 Chinese and Japanese designers in a single space is a virtually impossible task, but we have realized it through film,” says this exhibition's curator Gong Qijun, “this is not just a multiregional film project. It is also cross-cultural encounter and dialogue.”

In these real conversations, designers look back on the golden age of graphic design, discuss worries and challenges stemming from generative AI, share misunderstandings and reinterpretations of different cultural contexts, and frankly recount how they have found their own sense of direction in these changing times, revealing the broad possibilities of design as cultural practice.

During the exhibition, Fosun Foundation will hold a series of related events to enhance the exhibition experience. The opening symposium will invite major figures such as Nippon Design Committee Director Yoshiaki Irobe; a lecture series will invite industry professionals to provide deep analysis of the historic threads and contemporary value of Japanese design; meanwhile, multiple guided exhibition tours will provide members of the general public with diverse perspectives for understanding the exhibition. In this era flooded with images, this exhibition bringing together the quintessence of Japanese graphic design provides an opportunity to ponder the essence of visual language and the future of design.