[KOKUYO Vol.2] How did we search for and express “KOKUYO-ness”? Unpacking the care embedded in structure, design, and words

“What is KOKUYO, really?”

This is a question we asked ourselves — and were asked — over and over while formulating the strategy and examining the wireframes for the corporate site.
Without answering this fundamental question, we could not express “KOKUYO-ness” on the site.

To find the answer, we conducted interviews to understand KOKUYO’s present and future while also reading through past materials and unraveling its history.

This process, too, involved an enormous amount of input.
We drew on the history of each site, the company history published for the 100th anniversary, and “KOKUYO Chronicle,” a body of content KOKUYO had compiled in the past (still public today).
We began by laying out representative products and epoch-making events, one by one, as a single chart.

As we read through the historical materials and wrote down the symbolic events and items, we noticed something.

“KOKUYO’s history cannot be traced in a straight line.”

KOKUYO’s history expanded its business fields from stationery to furniture, then to spaces and mail-order. Its path, branching out like leaves through repeated divergences, was not linear growth but organic — nothing less than the growth of a living organism.
This realization suddenly appeared at the end of steadily continuing to work with our hands.

Moreover, the organizing of the “unchanging things” since the founding, which we had been carrying out alongside the unraveling of history, proved useful here.

Three corporate values: “Empathy and Co-creation,” “Experience Design,” and “Experimental Culture.”

What if these values were the driving force behind the expansion of business fields?
What if new businesses are born as new values arise and multiply together?

As we gazed at the history with such thoughts in mind,
there came a moment when this hypothesis and the map of history connected.

This organic diagram depicted only from the past up to the present point.
What we needed to draw next was a map connecting the present to the future — showing the continuation of this history.

We produced several ideas, but none amounted to a decisive one.

One day, with the strategy proposal fast approaching, CD/AD Yonemichi, PM Kusumoto, and editor Horie — who had each been advancing the work — gathered to knock their ideas against one another.

How do KOKUYO’s values — “Empathy and Co-creation,” “Experience Design,” “Experimental Culture” — live within KOKUYO today?
What kind of society is the “autonomous, collaborative society” KOKUYO aims for?
And what exactly is the “WORK & LIFE STYLE Company” that KOKUYO strives to be?

Returning to what we had heard in the interviews,
we checked the definition of each word, formed hypotheses, and turned them into diagrams.
When something felt off, we rebuilt the hypothesis again.

Discussing as we wrote and erased, and erased and wrote, again and again,
we repeated thorough trial and error for about four or five hours until we reached a conclusion.

Gradually our thinking came together, an outline began to appear, and this is the diagram that was completed.

We drew “Empathy and Co-creation,” “Experimental Culture,” and “Experience Design” as KOKUYO’s driving force — a “value-creation cycle.”
Starting from staying close to people’s feelings, as that cycle keeps turning, KOKUYO produces exciting products and experiences. What is produced becomes a force that supports people’s rich, autonomous, collaborative society. We concluded that this is KOKUYO, the WORK & LIFE STYLE Company.

The history we had unraveled, the present, and the KOKUYO to come.
The moment all of it lined up on a single axis, we were able to hold the core.
With this, we could express KOKUYO’s past, present, and future.

Having this single diagram meant that, when planning and creating wireframes, we could clearly point to which part we were focusing on.

As we touched on in the Vol.1 article,
the axis drawn from the interviews was being “people-centered.”

What we arrived at while producing the wireframes — something we could not discover at the strategy stage — was KOKUYO’s “character.”
In building the site, the greatest turning point was defining KOKUYO’s “words” and “editorial axis.”

Serious and trustworthy, yet somehow playful and charming.
Generous and broad.

How did we express that balance through copy, design, photography, and direction? We introduce it concretely, along with the points each member cared about.

The strategy document is also public.
Please compare this note article, the published document, and the finished site — the process we walked through should surely come into view.

In the following Vol.3, we introduce the behind-the-scenes of producing the “product-site area” in more detail. Please look forward to it!

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