Presentation Schedule
Designing the Modern: Japanese Crossovers in Indian Visual Culture and Ephemera (1920-1950) (111169)
Session Chair: Takashi Oishi
Tuesday, 10 November 2026 13:50
Session: Session 2
Room: Room G (4F)
Presentation Type:Panel Presentation
In the 1920s, an era that celebrated minimalism, American type designer William Addison Dwiggins’s advocacy for decorating the printed page led him to coin the term ‘graphic design’ to define the multifaceted nature of his work. While artwork that encompassed typography, illustration, and layout was newly popular in the Western art world, the use of calligraphy and imagery in a composition to effectively communicate subject matter has centuries of history in the art of Asia, particularly in the woodblock prints of Japan. At the turn of the twentieth century with a boom in print culture and consumerism, graphic design emerged as a professional practice in advertising, with European designers starting a trend known as ‘Japonisme’ that had a profound effect on Western artistic ideas of style, composition and colouration. In pre-Independent India, with a similar growth in consumer and print culture the impact of Japanese aesthetics and printing styles was equally significant. This panel examines Japanese design crossovers in Indian visual culture in the first half of the twentieth century focussing on ephemera such as posters and matchbox labels, and decorative arts such as majolica tiles and ceramic figurines. The session will demonstrate how Japanese design played a crucial role in the emergence of a new aesthetic language that broke away from tradition to usher in an indigenous modernity and a unique cosmopolitanism in India’s design culture.
Authors:
Amita Kini-Singh, Kizuna India-Japan Study Forum, India
Pithamber Polsani, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, India
Takashi Oishi, Kobe City University for Foreign Studies, Japan
Aki Toyoyama, Konan University, Japan
About the Presenter(s)
Ms Amita Kini-Singh is a Independent Scholar at Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India
See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule
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