Ex-formation means to make things unknown rather than to make things known. This communication design method is based on a new concept: making people aware of how little they know. It is also an educational record of Kenya Hara’s decade at Musashino Art University.

Present the Japanese industrial vision to be visible and propose a concrete action program. That is the role of design activities across the area. This book, the summary of series Tosho (Iwanami Shoten) is the road map of activities in the near future of myself and Hara Design Institute.

White is a work of Kenya Hara’s in which he tries to reassess white not as a color but as the foundation of Japanese sensibilities. This is a test, from the standpoint of design, of the study that runs through the aesthetics of books like novelist Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, philosopher Shuzo Kuki’s The Structure of Iki, art thinker Tenshin Okakura’s Book of Tea and agriculturalist Inazo Mitobe’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

It was 2003 when Hara’s overview of design, Design of Design, was published. This book, with its broad perspective that does not stop with the specialized field of design, is in its 23rd printing. With editions in both traditional and simplified Chinese characters and Korean, it has also gained a wide variety of Asian readers. In 2007, when the English-language tome, Designing Design, with expanded text and illustrations came out, a special edition of the Japanese book was published as well.

Lars Müller Publishers is well known among designers and architects for its intelligent editing. When this book was being made, the owner/designer Lars Müller told Kenya Hara, “Monographs ended ten years ago. If you’re going to put out a design book, you must be the author.” In the beginning, I envisioned a larger book than it turned out to be, but his advice changed my mind and the format was decided. This is not a monograph; it's a designer’s book.

Asahi Shimbunsha published, as a book, a series of columns that Hara had written for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun [Japan Economic Newspaper] from 2000 to 2001. It’s as if the concise writing developed for the short lines and small space of the newspaper is as easy to read as if it were melting in the brain.] The illustrations appearing on each page are by Kochi Hajime.

After Please Steal This Poster went out of print, in 2009 Heibonsha asked to reprint it. Since this would be a second edition 15 years after the first, it was decided to add three essays (“+3”), leaving blank the intervening 15 years. These pieces, written while ruminating on his former writing style, look closely at Hara’s contemporary work. These have been published in Korean, simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters.

This was the first collection of essays, serialized for about five years for the monthly magazine Shosetsu Shincho, starting in 1991. With the series title, Sore wo tsukurinagara [While Creating That] Hara wrote about his distressful experiences in the early days of his career as a designer. He wanted to use the series title for the collection but the editors said it was hard to understand what was being created, so convinced him to change it.

This exhibition, held in China, featured a collection of Kenya Hara's work up to 2011. The content of the exhibit was divided into three major chapters: finished design projects, collaborative projects with China that are just coming to fruition, and MUJI art direction. Displayed on three different floors, the exhibit allowed for a comprehensive view of the designer's work. The first exhibition was held in Beijing, then traveling in Shanghai and Qinhuangdao.