Our Osaka office "Osaka Tech Lab" moved in July. (Check out the new office here) The goal for this office was to accelerate innovation, new things, and experimentation and create products from the Osaka Tech Lab. A grassroots movement started to gather people who resonated with this goal—kind of a "follow me!" vibe—and get them involved. That's when the request came to me in the Creative Office at our Tokyo office.

I wanted to realize the ambitions of the Osaka office members from a creative perspective! I wanted to be part of making this happen! So I decided to join in and make every effort to contribute to them although my power may be insufficient. (Doing what you want to do—that flexibility is pretty appealing, isn't it?)

First, to visualize what the new office should be like as it comes to life, we decided to create a concept and develop a story that would connect to the office's interior design and recruitment promotions. The project title is "Osaka Tech Lab 2.0 STORY."

Osaka Tech Lab 2.0 STORY: the Journey towards Our Goal

I interviewed the CEO and vice president about a story of what they aim to achieve in the future, starting with the reasons behind the company's decision to establish an office in Osaka. Following the interview, I thought the key part of this new office project's concept would be what we should do to achieve our ideal vision and what kind of place we create.

Based on this core idea, we created a slogan (concept words) in simple terms that anyone in the company could understand, to get all members on the same page. By the time this part came up, we were already communicating weekly with the Osaka members and the Tokyo-based production team. This fostered the following mindset: "Let's have a breakthrough!" It was a fun and lively meeting where we could freely discuss what are in our minds, and sometimes a casually spoken word would be adopted as is. (Thanks to the project manager who encouraged us to have fun discussions on this.)

And Here Is the Concept Words That We Created:

*At the concept planning stage, it was written as "Co-LAB", but we decided to spell "CO-LAB" using all capitals as "CO" contains a broader meaning, rather than an abbreviation for Company. *We played with the words in our slogan. Shown in the above image, the "GO" in "Shu-GO" (to gather) is a pun on "Let's go!" to add a sense of action. Similarly, "SHIN" in "Has-SHIN" (to transmit) is meant to evoke several positive Japanese words that share the sound. The Osaka office members were so fired up that we decided, to use this as our slogan, unlike stuffy traditional concept. The slogan implies the spirit of sharing opinions and ideas and brings them to life, regardless of the members' roles, including designer, engineer, and manager.

The Slogan Is Set! Next Up: Wall Design for the Space Where People Gather

The Osaka office has a space called Junction, just like the Muromachi office in Tokyo. It's designed to be a place where people both inside and outside the company gather to spark innovation. For this place, we plan to depict a meaningful graphic measuring about 8,400mm wide by 2,500mm high on a wall. This is the graphic we painted on the wall. As it's something that will remain in the office in a long term, it was a very rewarding project for us as creators. The designers at Osaka Tech Lab collaborated with those in Tokyo, brainstorming ideas to put the finishing touches on the design with generative AI. It's a design packed with our slogan, "Shu-GO! Has-SHIN! CO-LAB," and the spirit of "Let's have a breakthrough!"

I'll share some interesting design tricks with you next time!

Next time, I would like to share another story about the wall design based on the concept of "Shu-GO! Has-SHIN! CO-LAB" with details about which designers are particular, along with the behind-the-scenes of LP creation.