When the first time I saw his designs, the uniqueness of pattern design immediately draws my attention. Introducing Asao Tokolo. TOKOLO was born in 1969, and studied in architecture design. Now, he work as a part time lecturer in Musashino Art University. His most significant work of design is TOKOLO Pattern Magnet, which is one of the winner entry of Japanesque Modern Collection in 2006.
Japanesque Modern Collection is a collection of Japan made stuffs that uniting the traditional crafts, techniques and culture with the modern technology advancements, which can fit well in modern living lifestyle and also bring international competitive advantages to Japanese industrial works. The stuffs here can be in any genre, including product design, contents, services, systems, environmental and others. I think it is a great honor if one’s design was selected, so big congratulations to Asao Tokolo!
Picture above is the TOKOLO Pattern Magnet. It is serves as a decorative elements for the interiors. What so special about this magnet is, the pattern each is separatible and joinable with any other magnet pieces, means it can have endless possibilities of pattern design! The concept behind this work is “to connect”, each magnet is decorated with karakusa shapes. Inherited the karakusa charactertistic, the combination of the magnets are limitless. It can be work as a piece alone, as well as 1000 pieces that form a huge pattern, how genius!
His unique pattern designs has applied in many design disciplines like interior decorative elements, t-shirts, furnitures and even logo designs. Most of his pattern designs was originated from combination of simple geometry shapes, curves and lines, but with his creativity, simple shapes turns into miracle pieces of aesthetic beauty.
Actually I found out that his pattern works, especially the PPP or Piecing Piecing Pieces, shares some shadow of Keith Haring‘s illustration. Keith Haring was popular of his Radiant Baby and the tribal works of illustrations. I found out their works are very original, and has some sort of spirit lives beneath their work that make their works look “alive”.
Just check out TOKOLO’s site for more design works, although his website is a little hard to navigate. Or you can take a look at his works at Flickr, uploaded by DesignTide.
End note:
– Recently I checked the Japanesque Modern website again, and found out that they recently selected the 2007 version of 100 collections, if you are interested, just click here to take a look at the design.
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