1) Guests From the USA
Our guests from the USA was a social design team which has become quite the topic in L.A. and San Francisco. Among them were GOOD magazine's community director, Max Schorr; GOOD magazine's creative director, Casey Caplowe; and renowned founder of the NPO Designers Accord, Valerie Casey, who is currently enrolled in IDEO. Also in the esteemed group of ten were members of the International Exchange Fund, the New York based Japan Society, and Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO).
The reason for their visit was they have heard about MERRY Project and for a long time JIDPO has taken notice of MERRY Project's progress since it's founding in 1999.
For our guests from abroad, this was their first time visiting Japan.

Although they had planned to visit MUJI, Honda's automotive department, and greenz as well as many other places, MERRY Studio had the privilege of being their very first destination after getting off the plane.

After a quick greeting and introduction, we led our guests to the rooftop.
Japan has very little space compared to America and our guests mentioned how impressed they were by the design characteristics produced by that lack of space.
It was their first time looking at Tokyo's landscape from above so they were unsurprisingly surprised by the million-dollar view from our humble little rooftop. You could see Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills. You could even see the famed Mount Fuji rising magnificently in the distance. This is Tokyo, alright! was what they exclaimed while taking in the atmosphere of the city that's proudly bearing it's name.
After touring the rooftop, we proceeded back to MERRY Studio where we all sat down for some sushi before carrying out a special 1.5 hour seminar.
The theme of the seminar was about social design.
We started off by describing MERRY's history, recalling our past activities throughout the decade 1999-2009.
After that we went on to the meaning of designing a society,　the things designers should produce hereafter, and the kind of connection we should make with the society were among the topics in our discussion.
How the modern designer should be like was also discussed, making the 1 hour and 30 minutes we had seem very, very insufficient.

In the beginning, they seemed unclear concerning why MERRY Project is all about smiles and the meaning behind that, but as our discussion advanced they found similarities with their own work. Along the way they also came to understand the importance of smiles, smiling being the foundation of the society's way of communicating, and all the things MERRY Project has worked on so far in order to achieve a way of designing that can connect persons and their society.

From children to grandpas and grandmas, men and women alike, even crossing barriers of nationality, the universality in our activities has earned us admiration from our guests.
As we came to the climax of the seminar, we showed them a video of the umbrellas printed with pictures of people smiling at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. They were very moved. They mentioned how they strongly felt that this is, with no doubt, what social designing is all about.

After that, we finished lunch and snacked on chocolates and pomelos. Comfortably full with food and lectures, everyone went home feeling satisfied.


２）Social Design Forum
Two days later, it was our turn to visit them. On February 8th we visited the Social Design Forum they were holding in the Designer Center located on the fifth floor of Midtown.（click here to enlarge the distribution map on the upper left corner ）

Mr. Ikeda as chairman of Eco Plaza gave the presentation for GOOD magazine and DESIGNERS ACCORD.
From Japan were Mr. Ueda (producer of Think the Earth) and Mr. Nagai (representative from Hakuhodo Design).
In the span of five hours, each gave their respective presentations.

GOOD magazine is about doing good things, a media company targeting people who are in search of good way of living.
They first launched their bimonthly issue on September 2006. Now they have a whopping number of 70,000 people enlisted for subscription.

click here for more details→http://www.good.is/

NPO Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.
The Five Guidelines of Designers Accord is often referred to as the Kyoto Protocol of the design community.

click here for more details→http://www.designersaccord.org/

One thing we're sure everybody agreed to was about the present designing as the act of bringing happiness to communities, cities, and ultimately the world as a whole.
The reason is not only because of this discussion, it's because the world is naturally turning towards that direction.
A designer's profession is about making advertisements as a means to effectively sell items. The era where the means of designing whole communities becomes the very essence of design is rapidly, mercilessly closing in on us.

Through our lecture at Nippon Designer Gakuin the week before, we also conveyed the same thing.
The theme was "MERRY communication". The present designing is about making our communities and people better.
About connecting people and their city, designing a whole society in itself.



We took pictures with Mr.So (Board Chairman) in front of a large MERRY smile-printed wall painting at the entrance of the school.
Among the 100 students who attended the lecture, two girls from Indonesia enthusiastically requested information about us. Only a few days after the lecture the two contacted us and payed a visit to our office.
Looking at the young students nowadays, it felt like these students who came from abroad, desperately giving their best, have more sparkle in their eyes. It left us wanting to say "Try harder!" to the Japanese.



Lately we've received so many guests, it seems like every day people from around the world come to visit MERRY Studio.
With guests from countries like America, Indonesia, Korea, Brazil, MERRY Office has slowly begun to give off a very international atmosphere.
After all, being connected to people from around the world is, undoubtedly, a very MERRY thing indeed.

MERRY IN TOKYO 2009

MERRY IN TOKYO 2009

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