The Quiet Confidence of Tomoko Miho PDF

T co th of J 78 EYE 105/23 1. Tomoko J. Miho, formal college graduation portrait, 1956, taken when she was 24. Photog raph: Toyo Miyatake Studio. Courtesy of the RIT Cary Graphic Design Archive, Tomoko Miho collection. Eye 105/23 79 2 Tomoko Miho was arguably one of the most underappreciated graphic...

T co th of J 78 EYE 105/23 1. Tomoko J. Miho, formal college graduation portrait, 1956, taken when she was 24. Photog raph: Toyo Miyatake Studio. Courtesy of the RIT Cary Graphic Design Archive, Tomoko Miho collection. Eye 105/23 79 2 Tomoko Miho was arguably one of the most underappreciated graphic designers of the twentieth century. Her modest and reserved demeanour belied a fierce inner determination to produce distinctively content-driven work that employed her meticulous skill and exquisite clarity of vision. Miho's methodology was a complex confluence of European Modernism, Japanese sensibility and American business acumen that she applied to corporate communications, architectural signage, and environmental graphics. Her story is a legacy to the next generation of designers. Tomoko Miho (nee Kawakami) was born on 2 September 1931 in Los Angeles, California. She was the youngest of three children of Japanese-American parents, Yoshitomo (John) Kawakami and Fumiko (Mary) Kuromi Kawakami. She had two older brothers: Mikio Kawakami (1926-99) and Kazuo Kawakami (1928-2018). The Kawakami family were florists. 'My parents had a flower shop on Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles, with fields of flowers in the back; Tomoko told an interviewer. 'My mother's sister and her husband ran Flower View Garden, her brother had a shop in Glendale, and my brothers and I helped our parents out on weekends... It was a wonderful way to grow up, seeing flowers all the time and watching my parents arrange them in the shop.' Tomoko Kawakami was only ten years old when, on 7 December 1941, Imperial Japan staged a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, destroying much of the US Pacific Fleet and killing 2400 Americans. A few days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, plunging the country into the Second World War. On 19 February 1942, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which mandated the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese-Americans - including men, women, children, the elderly and the infirm - for the duration of the war. They were given one week to settle their affairs and report to assembly centres with only what they could carry. Families lost thousands of dollars from having to sell off properties quickly. They lost their businesses, their personal property was stolen or vandalised and their lives were shattered. In spring 1942, the Kawakami family was dispatched to the Gila River War Relocation Center - one of ten internment camps located throughout the American West - along with Japanese-Americans from Fresno, Sacramento and Los Angeles, California. The living quarters across all camps resembled military-style barracks, creating cramped and unsanitary living 80 EYE 105/23 Arrd,olf,,lill-.,C · f>nllt«H,fltwJttU,. 2. A symbol for the Creative Learning Center, Princeton, New Jersey, 1962, on a folder for Creative Playthings, Inc., offset lithography, 22.9 x 30.5 cm. Creative Learning Center produced learning aids for children. The five circles in the contours of the child's head symbolise the various class levels. In addition to the logo, the Nelson studio also designed stationery, book covers and graphics for books. Design firm: George Nelson and Associates. Designers: Tomoko Miho, Carlos Ramirez, Don Ervin. Courtesy of the RIT Cary Graphic Design Archive, Tomoko Miho collection. spaces for families. At its peak, there were 13,348 people housed in the Gila River War Relocation Center. In November 1945, interned Japanese-Americans were released to face the test of starting over - building their businesses and livelihoods from scratch. Shamed and humiliated, they chose not to talk about their sorrow and resentment for fear of arousing an anti-Japanese backlash. Years later, Tomoko reflected on this challenging time: 'In order to recover, we had to excel. The experience forced many Japanese-Americans to seek new horizons.' After the war, the Kawakami family moved to Minnesota, and Tomoko attended West High School in Minneapolis. She later said: 'When I was attending high school, the art teacher arranged for me to get a summer scholarship at the Minneapolis School of Art. She liked the work I did in her class and encouraged me. So that is how I started.' Eventually, her parents separated. Her older brother Mikio worked as an architect in New York City, and her middle brother Kazuo became an accountant. In 1951, at nineteen, Tomoko and her friend Betty travelled to New York City. They visited the usual tourist sites like Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building and museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library. She would later reminisce to an interviewer: 'I'd read about Impressionism and knew the names of a few European artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and that was about it. Just seeing the paintings - that I only knew from books - on the walls of the museum was overwhelming. The scale of art, and the space.' Californian horizons Invigorated and inspired, Tomoko continued taking classes at the Minneapolis School of Art, including courses in advertising and graphic design. She worked part-time at the Bureau of Engraving in Minneapolis to earn money for college where she had the opportunity to learn the rudiments of print technology. One of her teachers suggested she look into ArtCenter School in Los Angeles, California (now ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena), to continue her art education full time. She applied and was accepted with a full scholarship. Tomoko was fortunate to have her parents' support, as well as Los Angelesbased relatives she could live with while she attended her classes. 'ArtCenter College of Design really expanded my horizons, and I think it was there that I knew I wanted to be a graphic designer,' she said in an interview later published in the 2013 Hall ofFemme: book about her. Compared to Minneapolis, Los Angeles was a pulsating city with frenzied traffic and clogged freeways. 'I may have seen graphic design as a way to make sense out of all that, as a way of imposing a structure on my chaotic environment. Then, too, being with talented students and teachers couldn't help but make me think that I could be part of the graphic design world.' She noted that her decision was influenced by 'Mary Sheridan, one of the ArtCenter teachers, who always encouraged me. She was doing a lot of package design, which I loved, and sometimes let me help out in her office. I ended up switching to industrial design because packaging was in that department.' In 1952, during her first year at ArtCenter, she met fellow Japanese-American James Noboru Miho (1929-2022). Miho was born the second of three sons to a wealthy Japanese-American vineyard owner in Gridley, located in northern California. His grandfather and father had made successive fortunes in rice and grapes. 'I'm glad we were wealthy when I was a kid because that's when you learn; Miho told an interviewer. 'My father was free to try new things, like flying an airplane to spray the orchards or buying a Caterpillar to make life easier for the workers. He loved to buy new cars, and we even had our own gas station. But when the war came - bang- that was it. We lost everything.' Like the Kawakami family, his family was also sent to a relocation camp; the Miho family was interned in Tule Lake on the California-Oregon border. After graduating from high school, and at his father's request, Miho studied business at Pasadena City College for three and a half years. An elective course in graphic design inspired him to transfer to ArtCenter but, after just one semester, he was drafted into the US Army at the start of the Korean War in 1950. He endured seven gruelling months as an infantry officer before he received a life-changing two-week leave in Japan. He visited Tokyo and Kyoto and all the places his parents and grandparents had talked about during his childhood. Miho vowed: 'I was so inspired by that trip that I decided - ifI lived through nine more months of combat- I would become an architect or a designer.' After his release from military service, he sampled the offerings of several an schools before returning to ArtCenter in 1951 under the G. I. Bill to study advertising. It is often said that opposites attract; Tomoko Kawakami was naturally reserved and quietly observant, while J~mes ~iho possessed a vivacious and chansmanc personality. It is also acknowledged that people tend to gravitate to those who ha~e similar interests and backgrounds. In their case, they were both Nisei-Japanese for 'second-generation' - Japanese immigrants' children, born and educated in the United States. They shared the experience of being imprisoned in a relocation camp at a young and impressionable age. Still, Tomoko and James emerged from this to find joy and purpose in their studies at ArtCenter. They shared a passion for Modernist art and design - and an implacable resolve to earn their living as professional designers. James Miho graduated in 1955 and, with the help ofEdward A. Adams, ArtCenter's founder, he secured his first job at an advertising agency in Philadelphia, N. W. Ayer & Son. He was to work directly with the firm's vice-president and art director Charles Coiner -who brought fine art into advertising- collaborating on Container Corporation of America's influential 'Great Ideas of Western Man' advertising campaign. It was Miho who introduced the work of Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers to the series - pairing contemporary images with timeless quotes. The shakkei philosophy A year later, in 1956, Tomoko graduated in Industrial Design. She recalled that time: 'I'd thought of moving to New York because my brother was there. But I was going out with James Miho at the time.' Instead, Tomoko moved to Philadelphia. 'I found a job as a graphic designer, and we got married. But soon after, he was transferred to Detroit, and we moved there. I was always able to find a job on my own, which was fortunate because we moved around a lot.' Once she resettled in Detroit in early 1957, Tomoko was hired as a package designer for Harley Earl Associates. She was primarily responsible for designing packaging for frozen foods, pharmaceuticals and paper products. Famously known as the 'design czar' of General Motors, Harley Earl's main job was as its design director. He transformed GM's design and styling into a marketing tool and, in the process, positioned the company as one of the world's largest auto makers. Harley Earl Associates was his independent design firm established in 1945 and it boasted a client roster resembling a 'who's who' of American industry. Tomoko stayed for three years. In March 1960, the Mihos took a work sabbatical and, along with their friends from ArtCenter, Bob and Vicky McClain, embarked on a six-month trip to Europe. They travelled in two silver Porsches that each couple had purchased before the trip and picked up in Stuttgart, Germany. In the Hall ofFemmes interview Tomoko explained: 'We'd heard that there was a lot of interesting design work being done in Europe, so we decided to go there. We put together a list of people and studios to visit, along with the museums and historical sites. Vicky was born in Italy, so we also spent some time with their family in Italy. Then we continued through Italy, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium, and all the way up to Scandinavia. We visited many artists, such as the sculptor Hans Erni and designers Herbert Leupin and JosefMiiller-Brockmann in Switzerland, and Tomas Gonda at the Hochschule fiir Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany. One of our classmates at ArtCenter was Bjorn Petersen, who was quite well known as an art director [in Sweden]. We visited Konstfack, the school in Stockholm. And we went to Helsinki in Finland, where we met Armi Ratia, the founder of Marimekko. We spent quite a bit of time with her and kept in touch for many years. 'The Swiss design became very influential during the period when we were there. It was really an exciting time in graphic design,' Tomoko noted. 'Travelling in Europe opened my eyes to design work that was both freer and more structured than what we learned at ArtCenter. Though I wouldn't say that it had an immediate influence on my work because I'd become fairly confident in my own abilities as a designer. It was more about expanding my horizons.' She attributes her confidence to the cultural influence of shakkei, a Japanese garden philosophy. The term shakkei translates to 'borrowed scenery' or 'borrowed landscapes', a technique incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden. The purpose is to integrate the background and the foreground into one, granting a small environmental space a sense of depth and dimension. The Mihos returned from their trip in September 1960. They rented an apartment at the Colonnade, a newly built high-rise apartment complex designed by Mies van der Rohe in Newark, NJ, a short distance from Manhattan. Tomoko's nephew, Kenneth Horii, remembers his visits: 'As a young boy, I loved riding in Jim's Porsche sports car and appreciated their clean white Modernist apartment and architect-designed furniture. Tomoko was always very generous, talking with me and showing me their art collection. She had a dignified, quiet, sensitive demeanour consistent with her graphic sensibilities, and she exuded a calm strength of confidence and intelligence.' Once settled there, Tomoko looked for work. She later wrote: 'I was eager to work, and George Tscherny recommended that I show my portfolio to Irving Harper [at George Nelson Associates]. I met with him at the 50th Street office, and he hired me Eye 105/23 81 as a graphic designer. It was a memorable learning experience to work with Irving, who was an architect crossing over different disciplines to participate in the design of important projects like the Herman Miller furniture, the Howard Miller clocks, Bubble lamps, exhibitions, and graphics. 'It was probably the best place I could have worked at that stage of my career. It was the best design firm in the 1960s, and it was an office with multi-disciplined designers. George Nelson himself was a great influence of that time, an architect, industrial designer and also a writer about design. He wrote about a new idea for storage systems in his book Tomorrow's House, and the furniture company became interested and made him the company's director of design.' Tomoko's view of design expanded and flourished under the mentorship oflrving Harper, Nelson's design director. Don Ervin led the graphic design department, and it was under his direction that Tomoko designed price lists, product brochures and collateral for Nelson's main account, Herman Miller. In 1962, she was a member of a collaborative team of ten - staff graphic designers and talented freelance photographers - that produced the innovative 1964 Herman Miller Design loose-leaf catalogue and specifying tool. The subdivided three-ring 3 binder - containing several hundred pages combined product photographs, text, dimensional illustrations and textile and veneer samples in a modular system that mirrored the company's modular furniture products. It would set the standard for future contemporary catalogue design with its Modernist sense of clarity, precision and function. With Ervin's departure in 1963, Tomoko was selected to lead the graphic design programme. Her colleague, Ronald Beckman, recounted her challenge of managing large projects in a recent interview: 'She had to compromise a great deal when she worked with a team of people. But when she worked for herself, she was just very, very sure of herself and very commanding. She could work with a group, but she preferred to work alone.' On the move again In 1965, James Miho resigned from N. W. Ayer & Son and Tomoko left her position at the Nelson office to resettle in Los Angeles, citing family reasons. Tomoko and James worked as design partners and considered it a good experience. But after a while they both realised that California offered a very different lifestyle and began to plan a return to New York. Fate intervened 5 IIEl\i\l:-\\' MILLEB CSS 4 3-5. Three of seven Herman Miller product brochures for tables (3), light seating (4) and the CSS or Comprehensive Storage System (5), packed in a cardboard slipcase, 1962. 6 and 7 (opposite). Inside spreads from the CSS brochure. Design firm: George Nelson Associates, Inc. Design: Irving Harper, Don Ervin, Tomoko Miho, Anthony Zamora. Courtesy of Herman Miller Archives. II ER\t\\' \lllLER T\BLES 82 EYE 105/23 HERMAN i\1TLLER LIGHT SE \TI~G 6 Css Tho Comp,chen,iv S10,ago Sy,t m designed by Geo,go Nc150fl inlloduccl a new 1ppt"oach to storage probloml- Fu,niture in the uswl aenN it replaced by a sy,tsm of 1huctu,al 1uppo,t1 whieh ca'l c.,ry any delircd 11rrange'1\Crll of 1hol n. d,awcra, aliding panel, and other componon\1. 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