Featured Projects 2026 Adds Koyama, Kawakami, Harada to Design Festival Talks
A design festival built around talks and encounters rather than product launches is adding figures from music, animation, journalism, and architecture, which suggests the event's organizing idea is to put makers with different working methods in the same room and let the programs carry the theme.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
Featured Projects 2026 will run from September 25 to 27 at KOKUYO's THE CAMPUS in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The third edition of the design festival is organized around the theme "The 'interval' in which things are born," with talk sessions, workshops, meetups, table talks, and live performances. Newly confirmed participants include Takuya Koyama of Yabai T-Shirts Yasan, Noriko Kawakami, Yuma Harada, Niina Ai, and Takuto Okamoto.
The event uses THE CAMPUS, KOKUYO's Tokyo Shinagawa office, as a whole venue rather than a single hall, and spreads its programs across three days. Alongside the talk sessions, the schedule includes workshops, meetups, table talks, and live performances.
Speakers named for the talks represent design studios, animation, curation, video direction, product design, production, graphic design, consulting, architecture, art, and editing. One session covers how "interesting" is born; another looks at a web renewal project shared by mount inc. and KOKUYO staff; a third puts an architect and a designer in conversation about making and society, moderated by a book editor.
- Takuya Koyama: Gt.Vo. in Yabai T-Shirts Yasan, composer and filmmaker
- Noriko Kawakami: journalist, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT Associate Director, Vice Chair of the 2026 Good Design Award judging committee
- Yuma Harada: designer, UMA/design farm representative
- Niina Ai: Sony Music Entertainment Echoes artist, works in animation expression including MV and art direction for YOASOBI's "Yoru ni Kakeru"
- Takuto Okamoto: graphic designer and video director, MVs for Gen Hoshino's "Star" and "Ikidomari" and the title logo for TV Tokyo Music Festival
- Marina Fujiwara: Muda Inc., Muda inventor; speaks on "How is 'interesting' born?"
- Masahiro Yonemichi: mount inc. Art Director; speaks on brand consistency and the web renewal
- Taku Sasaki: KOKUYO YOHAK DESIGN STUDIO Art Director and Designer
- Saki Adachi: KOKUYO Corporate Communication Office, WEB/SNS lead and site renewal project leader
- Tomoyuki Arima: Nippon Design Center Arima Design Laboratory Creative Director and Designer; moderator
- Yuko Nagayama: Yuko Nagayama & Associates, architect
- Sayaka Ishii: Bnn Inc., book editor, BNN Director and Deputy Editor-in-Chief; moderator
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.