HOKUSETSU

🔻 Graphotype 🔻
Category: Poster 
Date: 1996
Client: Heiwa Paper Company, Japan
Designer: Ken Miki & Associates 
#f_graphotype

Ken Mimi’s promotional poster for the Heiwa Paper Company, a wholesale distributor of high quality print paper, is typical of his work: simple in logic but complex in execution. Heiwa Paper wishes to promote their product Hokusetsu (meaning ‘northern mountain’), a fine, uncoated Paper with a superior level of whiteness that they associated with snow. 

Miki used illustrator to build up a glistening mountain range spelling the word “SNOW” at its peaks, which are left free of ink, so that the paper’s unadulterated dazzling white shines out while the mountains darken progressively towards pitch black at their bases. 
Miki likens the image to a digital version of an ink-and-wash (sumo-e) printing, in which gradation in colour and line are achieved.
“Money does not make me happy” spread in copy magazine.