Hideki Inaba
Interview (2022)
Let’s start by talking about your origins. Where are you from?Shizuoka. My parents are from Izu, and we moved around a lot within the prefecture when I was a child. I was in the department of science and engineering in university. My first two years were spent in Kyushu because of the machinery there, and then my last was in Kanagawa. So I guess you can say I spent my youth going from place to place.
What was your childhood like?What I remember most is going to my grandparents’ house and playing out amongst nature in the sea, mountains, and rivers during vacations when I was in elementary school. When a grown-up says not to do something because it’s too dangerous, kids are going to do the exact opposite rather than obey. I was no different, and when I think back on it I got up to some pretty scary stuff outdoors back in those days.
So you grew up amidst lots of nature?That just happened to be the environment I was growing up in. On the other hand, I was also a huge fan of all the tokusatsu (SFX) and robot anime that was at the peak of popularity back then. I wasn’t that into “teaming up to beat the bad guys” and all that story stuff so much as I was just really drawn to the designs and forms the manmade things in the shows, like the mechs and robots built made-up technology. I think maybe that was the sole bit of artificial creation I was able to experience during that time I spent in rural settings. Those robot and mech toys were made by people who studied mechanical engineering and industrial design like I eventually did that then went on to work at toymakers. There they applied skills and knowledge originally meant for designing and manufacturing cars or precision instruments to providing fun stuff that fulfilled children’s fantasies. I learned all this later by reading background materials as an adult, which only made me all the more interested in these things.
Maybe that’s partly why you decided to major in science and engineering. What was your goal back then?I do think all my childhood interests played a part in my choice on a deep level, but it wasn’t like I had a clear goal in mind. I went to a technical high school, so going into science and engineering at university was the natural flow of things. I tinkered with machines and sketched out schematics in high school, and I carried this over into college by majoring in mechanical engineering and studying how to design precision instruments. But these were all virtual diagrams, just plans, so none of it felt very real to me. The whole time I kept thinking about how much more fun it would be to not just draft things, but give them a few more designer touches, playful elements. I guess that’s when I started to pick up an interest in design and art. Engineering is closely tied to both art and engineering these days, and even algorithms and programming call for some creative touches now, so it feels like a kind of planning or drafting that suits people’s lifestyles has finally taken shape.
When did graphic design first appear on your radar?I think I was pretty late to the game. I got a job at a stationary company not long after graduating, but at the same time I was hooked on music, fashion, and clubs, so my days were spent going straight out to party as soon as I finished work. We didn’t have the Internet or mobile phones back in those days either, which meant my lifestyle saw me looking at lots of fliers and posters, and plenty of the album covers and magazines also had designs that caught the eye. I’m pretty sure this was right around the trailblazing days of desktop music and desktop publishing, so something akin to graphic art existed in the club and music scenes, as well as in fashion, magazines and pretty much any other sphere of culture. Thinking that I could become a designer too if I learned my way around a computer, I started pouring all my wages and bonuses into buying a PC, which were still really expensive at the time. In the end I even ended up taking out a loan so I could afford one. Once I bought it, I started making graphics at home. I knew quite a few other people who were doing the same kind of thing to make music and graphic art back then, too.
How did your career as a designer kick off?I later switched jobs to a software company, where I was able to use all the pricy computers and equipment that I wanted. It was like something out of a dream. I’m really surprised they hired me since I didn’t have any career in that field to speak of. One day a senior guy who was sick of seeing me doing what amounted to playing around all the time told me, “There’s this new thing called the Internet, so try making a website for the company.” The thing is, not many businesses had homepages back then, and so I was at a complete loss as to what to do and ended up just bumbling along as I always did. At the time there was this place called “Electronic Café” on Dogenzaka in Shibuya. It was produced by the artist Takuya Matsunoki, and was the first Internet café in Japan, a very cool spot that always had cool techno music and VJs going. I started hanging out there and fell in with a bunch of folks who had gone to art schools overseas like the Royal College of Art in England and were making graphics and visuals for events. They ended up helping me out a bunch with creating the website for my company, and after I quit they would send graphic design jobs my way every so often.
Were they part of a creative team?No, more like a bunch of freelancers who were trial-and-erroring their way toward creating a new work environment. One of them was Atsushi Nakagawa, who is now at Team Lab, but back then he was VJing for Ken Ishii and other guys of Sublime Records. He taught me a lot about computer graphics and how to use different types of gear. Then one day he introduced me to this editor Toru Hachiga that was making this zine-like book called Timing Zero that collected work graphic artists from around the world. It had contributions from Dextro in it too, and I actually owned a copy myself. I took what constituted my portfolio at the time and went to meet Hachiga, at which point he said, “Hey, we’re going to be launching a magazine called +81 soon, so do you want to try designing some pages?” I was only in charge of a few visual pages for the debut issue, and since that was my first time ever doing editorial design they had plenty of complaints tune of “There’s no way we can use this” or “This file’s completely messed up.” Despite all that they hit me up again for the second issue and on, and before I knew it I was handling quite a lot of pages. I ended up sticking around for eleven issues.