This July, UDL Partners Fang Jianping and Liao Zicheng were invited to join the Design Tour Tokyo Pro program as special guests. Beyond taking part in the visits and exchanges, they also brought their own perspectives on design into the journey, sharing ideas, projects, and ways of thinking with the group.

One of the highlights was a conversation with Yoshiaki Irobe at Nippon Design Center, where Fang and Liao joined him in sharing project case studies and reflections on design practice with the participants. Around the same period, UDL Partners Ding Fan and Fang Jianping also took part in a separate conversation with Irobe during the exhibition Yitisiga: Graphic Design in Japan, discussing how designers in China and Japan approach local design and cultural context. A full-length article based on that conversation will be published by Design360°.

The trip also brought a reunion with Madoka Nishi, former editor-in-chief of IDEA. Compared with the nerves of their first meeting in 2018, this encounter in Tokyo felt much more relaxed. As Nishi put it, “Even though we come from different countries, there is a strong sense of resonance among people of the same generation in Asia.”

Fang and Liao also had the chance to meet and exchange ideas with Tomohiro Okazaki, Norio Nakamura, Taichi Tamaki, and other senior designers, while visiting institutions including Nippon Design Center, Dentsu headquarters, the Japan Graphic Design Association, TAKEO MIHONCHO HONTEN, the Ichigaya Letterpress Factory, and 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT.

Across the visits and conversations, the trip became a summer gathering shaped by design, with new connections, familiar faces, and many opportunities to better understand different paths of practice.

Images courtesy of Design Tour and personal documentation by Fang Jianping and Liao Zicheng.