James Bowskill is a British Art Director at A.C.O. Tokyo, where he develops brands on-line.

He also collects Japanese packaging, occasionally writes articles for Tokyo's web magazine PingMag, and is a member of London design team Superblue.

My ninamika.com Interview Sep 26 2004

On Friday, Washio san interviewed me about the creative process behind ninamika.com, for publication later this year. I hadn't been sure quite what to talk about but once the interview kicked off, I quickly got into the swing of things.

The interview centred around the theory and processes involved in the site - how I communicated with Mika, the site objectives, reasons behind decisions I made etc. Although I spent a few hours earlier in the week preparing notes and digging out archived sketches, the more interesting realisations ocurred during the interview. Things I hadn't consciously thought about at the time seemed clear as day when looking back at the project and explaining it to Washio san.

Having just checked his blog, I noticed a little was lost in translation - the design metaphor K.I.S.S (Keep it simple, stupid!) became "Keep it simple and stupid", which isn't quite what I meant! Will have to let Washio san know and check carefully when it's written up (though that'll be a challenge in itself, as it's going straight into Japanese).