Ken Miki: Bringing depth to design

Graphis, Sep/Oct 2001 by Saiki, Maggie Kinser

With temporality practically banished from the communication process by digitalization, Miki is doing his part to reinstate the grandeur of time. Miki's work on the website of Japan IBM's Design Center aims to counterbalance the speed, anonymity and emptiness of the digital experience. The first `Smile Project,' a Miki original, is a greeting card that arrives like an email but can be 'opened' with a few clicks of the mouse, allowing us to experience the feeling of breaking the seal on a physical letter.

When asked what he was looking for in the future of design, now that we are digitally connected, networked into complacency and globally standardized, Miki replied, "Since digitalization began, people have been craving something more human, more related to tools, culture, ethnicity, a more fundamental aspect, something with a greater life force. It's very important to make things that thrill and excite us, and remain firmly in our hearts and memories, not just in a computer memory."