Chapter 1
Design for the Real World

I am currently running a design office, Social Design Networks. Until now, while doing advertising design, I was also working with signs and architecture, but I wanted to be involved with design that would contribute to accumulating worth and deepening the maturity of society, so I decided to found this office. It's a little embarrassing, but it is the practice of "Happiness Design." After feeling the sense of helplessness in advertising design from 20 years ago, my sense of the value of design has been "restructured."
This thought began with a book I got while I was university student. It was Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek, published by Shobunsha in 1974. Expo '70 was held in Osaka, and while all of Japan was continuing to experience rapid growth, Papanek's message that "design must not be made a tool of consumption" really resonated with me at the time.
I was drawn in by the shocking title of Design for the Real World and bought the book, but after skimming through, it sat on my bookshelf gathering dust for decades. I reread the book last year. There is a mixture of things I can sympathize with and things that feel strange, but above all I was surprised how much the book was ahead of its time.
The Happiness Design that I am talking about here organizes the social values of design so it is not a continuation of his message but there is no doubt that for 45 years Papanek's words were somewhere in my mind.