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He has led the creative group "CAP" and worked on art direction for famous magazines such as "STUDIO VOICE," "VOGUE JAPAN," and "Casa BRUTUS," and continues to design for many magazines and advertisements, as well as managing the gallery "ROCKET. Mr. Yasushi Fujimoto is active in many fields, including designing many magazines and advertisements, as well as managing the gallery "Rocket. We wondered if the source of his creativity, which has always been at the forefront of the times, could be found on the bookshelf. In search of the answer, we visited the atelier of "Cap," which Mr. Fujimoto calls the "Bookshelf Building.

The 13-ton book collection is a drawer of editorial design

-The entire wall of the three-story building is bookshelves, but do you use different bookshelves for each floor?

climbing treesThe basement floor is a meeting space to let visitors in, so we painted the walls white and kept the bookshelves low to make it look good enough to function as an interior design. It's like saying, "I'm going to have a lot of visitors, so let's put in some books that won't embarrass them. On the mezzanine floor are old magazines such as "Esquire" and "Sports Illustrated," books on typography, and catalogs of various brands that can be used as reference materials for my work. The design space on the third floor is mainly occupied by magazines that I have worked on. This may be the only place other than Magazine House that has every issue of "BRUTUS" from the first issue.

(Left) The mezzanine floor is crammed with various materials. (Right) The design space on the third floor, where the walls are filled with magazines up to the high ceiling.

(Left) Back issues of Esquire, which he collects. (Right) He has a complete collection of all the issues of "BRUTUS," which he also works on.

-(Going down to the basement floor) It's a beautifully lined bookshelf. Do you have any particular taste?

climbing trees: We have fine-tuned the height of the shelves many times, limited them to three shelves so that they don't look oppressive, and as for the bookshelves on this floor, we are concerned about how they look as a presentation area. They've fallen apart a bit now because people don't put the books back where they were after reading them, but originally they were sorted and put in by the color of the spine. I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to color-code them by black, white, red, orange, and green," but the green just didn't line up.

-You are building a bookshelf as if you were laying out a magazine. Is this place mainly books that work for so-called presentations?

climbing treesI'm not sure if it would work for a presentation, or if it's a geeky photography book or contemporary art-related book that might be of interest to the customers who come here. Books can be a good opportunity to create a buzz, like "Steven Klein, that's good.　A book that I personally think works well for presentations is "Six (Sixth Sense)," a magazine published by Comme des Garçons. The magazine was produced by an editor named Atsuko Kozashi, and she has a great sense for selecting photographs.

-When did you first become aware of the need to build a bookshelf?

climbing treesI first became seriously interested in books when I started working for Heibonsha (a publishing company that published such magazines as "Taiyo"), but it was not until I became independent and opened my own office in Ichigaya that I actually had my own bookshelf. Heibonsha had a large collection of books for reference purposes, and there were two specialist librarians stationed there, and the books were crammed into a space of about 300 square meters, including three basement floors. There were some places that were locked and could not be entered. Hiroshi Aramata (editor's note: Aramata is a naturalist, researcher, novelist, and other multi-talented writer. His representative works include "Tales of the Imperial Capital") had his own desk, and he often went there to browse the materials. When I left Heibonsha, I asked him if I could have one book from his collection as a commemorative gift, and after much deliberation, I silently received a photo book that had been on my mind for a long time. I didn't know it at the time, but when I found out later that it was a collection of photographs by a famous photographer named Robert Frank, I was impressed, thinking to myself, "I have a good eye for photography.

-How do you usually interact with and enjoy books?

climbing treesI enjoy them as interior decorations, and I am also a collector. So, I buy all Bruce Weber's photo books and try to collect all the issues of "Esquire". It may sound a bit dirty, but there are times when I say, "The price of this photo book has gone up, so I'll buy it while I still can. I can't find them in Japan alone, so I have to search all over the world to buy them. Now I have organized my collection and try to keep only one copy of each magazine in the front page, but I want to have two copies of the ones I like, one for browsing and one for preservation. In particular, when I see Bruce Weber's "O RIO DE JANEIRO" in a bookstore, I feel like "I have to save it" and buy it, so I have about 5 or 6 copies.

-What are some of your editorial influences?

climbing treesThe most important one is Bruce Weber's "O RIO DE JANEIRO". I designed "STUDIO VOICE" based on that photo book. The quality of the paper for the cover and inside pages, the coloring of the photographs, and even the editing and bookbinding were all influenced by Bruce Weber. Bruce Weber is very good at bookmaking and editing. In fact, Bruce Weber once sold his photographs for the first time in Japan, but I left the gallery without buying anything. I like his work so much that I have all his photo books, but there was not a single photo that I wanted as a stand-alone. He is a good editor, so for me, the photo books seem to be more appealing than the original prints.

-When you say it, I do indeed feel that "O RIO DE JANEIRO" and "STUDIO VOICE" are something the same.

climbing treesI am glad to hear you say so. For "STUDIO VOICE," I cut a single photo into 10 equal parts and enlarged it to create a 5-page layout. When I was designing for "STUDIO VOICE," the photo book specials were selling like hotcakes. I was also allowed to use some of my own photo books in the magazine, and when I tried a design that reduced the size of a photo book and laid out all the pages on a single spread, many magazines copied it. I think that "STUDIO VOICE" was a big part of the photo book boom.

-Are you working on the design of the photo book?

climbing treesI did a lot of work. For gravure and photo books, it was a lot of fun, like making a movie, to lay out all the photos on a big table and think about the pagination: "Here's the cover, then this photo, then this photo, then this development, then the essay..." It was like making a movie. For a while after I became independent, I did not have the type of work where I had to think about the flow of the magazine, so I really enjoyed this type of work. When I was working for Heibonsha, I did a similar type of work every month for a visual magazine called "Taiyo," so I was confident when the theme was landscapes, but when the subject was people or models, it was different, and while I felt uneasy, it was also interesting. At that time, I looked at a lot of different photo collections. Nowadays, the editors of all magazines decide the pagination, and designers can only think of decorations at most. This may be one of the reasons why magazines have lost their vitality.

-I ordered and used an iPad from the U.S. as soon as it was released, and Mr. Fujimoto was quick to adapt to e-books, but I think e-books are a service that is the opposite of book collector values.

climbing treesI think that when it comes to photo books, the feel of turning the pages, the texture of the paper, and even the printing should be taken into consideration. After all, I cannot be satisfied with a monitor. As for magazines, I also use e-book apps to read them, and publishers are beginning to make money from e-publishing. We are in a transitional stage right now, so I think the way magazines are being published will change, and I think we will see creative products that respond to that change in the near future. I think that will happen sooner than expected, and in no time at all.