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Royal College of Art
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Kinya Tagawa

Info

  • Kinya Tagawa

  • Area

    School of Design

    Role

    Visiting Professor

  • Visiting Professor

    • Global Innovation Design

  • Kinya Tagawa runs the international design agency takram, with studios in Tokyo and London. Featuring a multilateral development approach that capitalizes on both design and engineering perspectives, he is active in wide range of products from interactive artworks to software and hardware. The firm has won several major awards including the Microsoft Innovation Award Grand Prize (2007) and red dot award: product design (2009). Recently he has been assigned as a member of the juries of D&AD Design Award, Japan Good Design Award and the James Dyson Design Award.

  • Biography

  • Kinya Tagawa is a co-founder of takram design engineering, a multidisciplinary design firm located in Japan. The firm works in a wide range of design fields including product, space, hardware, software and interactive art. Unifying rapid prototyping, story-weaving and problem-reframing allows the firm to create innovative concepts, products and experience design for a variety of businesses and institutions around the world.

    He holds an MA in Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) from the Royal College of Art. Following graduation, he worked at Leading Edge Design Corp. as a design engineer.

    His prominent works include “tagtype”, a Japanese character input device selected as part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York; “afterglow”, a laser drawing system and “NS4”, a user-interface developed for TOYOTA.

    In addition, he has served as a member of the juries for the D&AD Design Award, Japan Good Design Award and the James Dyson Design Award.

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Selected work

  • OVERTURE, a lighting installation for TOSHIBA in Milan

    OVERTURE, a lighting installation for TOSHIBA in Milan

    OVERTURE, a lighting installation for TOSHIBA in Milan

  • tagtype, a text input device

    tagtype, a text input device , designed by Shunji Yamanaka, Kinya Tagawa and Jun Homma

    tagtype, a text input device , designed by Shunji Yamanaka, Kinya Tagawa and Jun Homma

  • Muji Notebook, an iPad and iPhone application for note taking

    Muji Notebook, an iPad and iPhone application for note taking

    Muji Notebook, an iPad and iPhone application for note taking

  • Onboard Infotainment System for NS4, TOYOTA

    Onboard Infotainment System for NS4, TOYOTA

    Onboard Infotainment System for NS4, TOYOTA