I continue where I left off last blog unexpectedly went long.

About how to read and understand the picture book “The Giving Tree” in English. The sentence that with interpretation “And tree was happy…. but not really”.

Mr. Kiichiro Honda who translated it before Haruki Murakami.
According to Mr. Honda (Here is my translation Japanese in English again, funny)
“The tree was happy… but is it really?” (something like that, I translated it directly)

And, here is Mr. Murakami’s
“And the tree was happy… no she can’t” (something like that, I translated it directly)

Mr. Murakami denied clearly, she wasn’t happy.

I am a graphic & digital designer but my major was English and American literature. I chose “The Great Gatsby” for my graduation thesis by the way.

I am asked by some people that is it possible to be a designer if you didn’t graduate at art or design school? I can say yes if you really want to be, yes you can. I thought it would be better if I studied design at school during my training period, but not I think every experiences are necessary. Go with the flow, and then you will find life is perfect.

Why I think so is reading and understanding literature provided important skills as a designer. At the literature department, I learned about ways of thinking from different perspectives by the steps such as reading books, researching authors, making era verifications, touching on psychology, philosophy, sociology, and write my own interpretation.

I’m good at imaging something basically but I like to read stories thinking from author’s or character’s standpoint, and imaging what “I” think about it objectively. I think it is fun point to read books is there is no correct answer.

And the objective viewpoint is a necessary skill as a designer. Designing something with three viewpoints is important for designer. Specifically, we design taking best balance of these three viewpoints: clients, clients’ clients (messages to whom, people who will receive the message), and the designers.