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A digital illustration of a brown line drawing of a face on a dotted grid. Blue geometric shapes and lines are layered over the figure.

Tadashi Ueda is perhaps Japan's most enigmatic young designer

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Date
5 November 2012

Ask us what we know about Tadashi Ueda and you’ll be met with a simple answer – very little. The Japanese designer has a web presence that’s limited to a couple of Tumblrs and a brief, enigmatic biography – he was born in 1988 and graduated from the Kuwasawa design school in 2012. Whether he works commercially we can’t really say, but what we do know is this – the posters he knocks up in his free time to celebrate chance encounters with cats, being caught in the rain and moving to a new city are incredibly beautiful graphic objects and deserve to be appreciated regardless of their creator’s design pedigree. If you’re reading this Tadashi, drop us a line and help fill in the gaps. We’d love to know more.

A graphic in blue and grey featuring the word “Futura” in yellow lettering at the top. Below, four rows of yellow geometric shapes and characters are arranged on a grey background. The bottom blue strip reads “1923, Paul Renner”.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An illustration of a black circle and a white circle colliding on a pink background. A red jagged explosion shape marks the point of impact, flanked by Japanese characters in a bold, outlined font.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An illustration split horizontally into two contrasting landscapes. The top half shows a red sun over pink mountains, while the bottom half shows a white crescent moon over blue mountains. The word “Morgenrot” appears in the bottom right corner.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An illustration explaining the screen printing process. A pink stencil with the characters “孔版印刷” is pushed through a blue mesh, allowing ink to pass through in four coloured columns of red, green, blue and yellow.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An illustration of a person’s head and shoulders drawn in brown sketchy lines on a textured grey background. Blue geometric shapes resembling ladders or scaffolding are scattered across the composition. Japanese text at the top reads “十月十七日” and a line at the bottom reads “今日は雨に濡れた.”.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An illustration of a simple house shape on a black background, with different sections coloured red, blue and green. Japanese characters are placed within each section, with the word “HOUSE” written in yellow at the bottom.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

A graphic poster on a blue background featuring a large black inverted triangle with the word “MOVED” in pink. Below, a simple illustration of a house sits between two vertical white banners with Japanese text. A white triangle at the bottom contains the text “NEW HOUSE, NEW CITY, NEW STATIONS, AUGUST 2012. I MOVED!”. Small illustrations of city buildings and a railway track sit at the base.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

A yellow Japanese kanji character for “night” is centred within a thin yellow circle. The graphic is set against a dark, textured background with a bright yellow border.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

A graphic poster featuring a grid of 12 yellow minimalist figures, each showcasing a different hairstyle in grey. The Japanese text at the top reads “現代ヘアコレクション”, meaning “Modern Hair Collection”.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

An abstract graphic illustration on a dark green background. White lines form a grid-like pattern across the centre, overlaid with red Japanese characters and three yellow triangles containing the character “の”.
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Tadashi Ueda: Posters

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About the Author

James Cartwright

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James started out as an intern in 2011 and came back in summer of 2012 to work online and latterly as Print Editor, before leaving in May 2015.

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