'Beauty and visual impact are essential': Hokuto Kudo on why the visual experience is never an afterthought

We often hear that a person's childhood surroundings have a great impact on the type of work they will do in the future. And sometimes, if the parents are creative, they'll likely pass the creative bug to their offspring too. For Hokuto Kudo, both of his parents are graphic designers, so design wasn't a hobby he stumbled into but the wallpaper of his childhood in Tokyo. "I grew up surrounded by design and naturally loved drawing from an early age," he says. "In fact, the Japanese language textbook I used in junior high school was designed by my father."

In high school, when he encountered the artwork for Mr Children's album Shifuku no Oto, he realised he could pursue graphic design seriously as a career. He later found his way into the Department of Graphic Design at Tama Art University – the same course the album's designer had studied on. He graduated in 2012 and spent the following decade at an advertising design studio in Tokyo before going independent in 2022 under the name H.K.DESIGN, working across advertising, editorial, packaging, and visual identity for clients including Sony, Fujifilm, Bridgestone, Calbee, and the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

Growing up around his parents' design books and visual references gave him an early, near-constant exposure to the field's history. Two names stand out from it: Shigeo Fukuda, whose "bold, playful and non-verbal visual language" still amazes him, and Helmut Schmid, whose typography he describes as "remarkably refined and timeless".

Between them, Kudo says, they taught him that design "can be clear, beautiful and full of wit at the same time". More recently, his partner introduced him to secondhand bookstores around Shibuya and Setagaya – "quiet, nostalgic places filled with old books and forgotten publications" – where flicking through vintage design annuals can ignite fresh ideas and perspectives. Another source of inspiration comes from working on musicians' visual identities. "Every collaboration allows me to step into someone else's creative world, and those conversations continually challenge and inspire my own way of thinking."

Kudo's process has shifted a lot since his agency days, and he's candid about why. Back then, a typical brief meant producing three developed concepts – Plan A, B and C, each around 60 per cent finished – only for two of them to be junked. "It often felt strange knowing that two of those ideas were created only to be rejected," he admits.

These days, clients tend to reach out because they're sold on a specific piece of his work, saying, "I contacted you because I loved this project". From there, he has an in-depth conversation, develops the direction, moves on to rough sketches before transferring into the final artwork. "I find this approach far more meaningful," he says, "as it allows both the client and myself to build the work collaboratively rather than simply choosing from multiple finished options."

In the artwork for Japanese musician Yuji Nakada's solo acoustic album, Roman Gatari 2, Kudo depicted "the atmosphere and emotions that emerge while listening to the music" rather than creating a literal depiction. "I created illustrations inspired by the songs themselves and combined them with typography to build a quiet, dreamlike visual world. I feel the balance between image, typography and the physicality of the printed piece came together particularly well, making it one of my favourite recent works."

Meanwhile, Stranger Things Book, a self-initiated zine, gathers the rejected layouts and abandoned ideas from a poster project that was exhibited in a paper-focused exhibition in Aoyama, Tokyo. "It brings together rejected layouts, unfinished compositions, and alternative ideas in what appears to be a chaotic collection – but beneath that chaos is a subtle structure and logic. I was free to embrace a more emotional and intuitive form of expression than I normally could in commercial work. That freedom makes this project especially meaningful to me."

In Day by Day Form, this began as idle notebook sketches, scanned and built out with no fixed meaning in mind, and went on to land selections at both the International Poster Triennial Toyama and the Tokyo TDC Annual Awards – recognition he says he "never expected".

Whatever the project, Kudo is unapologetic about putting the visual experience first. "I've never been interested in work where the concept comes first while the visual experience is sacrificed. For me, beauty and visual impact are essential – they are what invite people into the work in the first place," he says. "What excites me is seeing how those private thoughts can eventually reach people through books, posters, album artwork or exhibitions. Especially in music packaging and publishing, nothing makes me happier than knowing someone feels, 'I want to keep this with me.'"