We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Yoko Kakuchi about their original and creative Pendant design work. Yoko Kakuchi is an award-winning fashion designer, that makes our world a better place with their original pendant works.
Yoko Kakuchi ("YK") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work A.B.C Pendant. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
YK : As my brand name indicates, my works are heavily influenced by my twin daughters. Watching how they play with blocks and draw figures, a concept of “to play with form” came into my mind. Through my works, I focus on transforming things that we take for granted into contemporary art pieces that reflect our age and affection towards our daily lives.
YK : I wanted to achieve transforming literal alphabets into something more vibrant and colorful ones, which is very rare to find in accessories with alphabetical charms.
YK : I want to take advantage of this award to reach out broader audience to showcase my inspiration.
YK : It took for me 3 month or so. The most time consuming part was to be realized reach forms.
YK : As a mother of twin daughters, the concept of alphabet pendant came into my mind when I watched them playing with Lego blocks and I wanted to assimilate the concept with our daily life in a digital age.
YK : I produce the product for my brand MOMOKAMEI, and currently available at some shops in Japan as well as at MOMOKAMEI online shop.
YK : Alphabet charm tends to be institutionalized, so I wanted to challenge the concept and add different flavor to make them more colorful ones.
YK : Though the rough shape of alphabet is universal, detail of the design came from my daily lives with my twin daughters, playing with various blocks.
YK : My target customer for this product is people who love art and contemporary Jewelry.
YK : Typically, alphabet charms tend to lack uniqueness with little attention being paid on its shape itself. My design pays extra attention to the form of charms, making them distinct among similar pendants.
YK : I call the product A.B.C, which is the abbreviation of Alphabet Block Chatter. When originating this design, I imaged those alphabetical charms chatting each other to project lively atmosphere.
YK : Uniqueness of my design is to transform literal alphabets into more vibrant and colorful ones.
YK : Uniqueness of the design is to transform literal alphabets into more vibrant and colorful ones, which could be achieved from my daily lives with my twin daughters.
YK : I used 3D CAD, Rhinoceros 5.0, to make prototypes. 3D CAD increased efficiencies of my work and augmented my knowledge of time-honored jewelry making process.
YK : I looked up various alphabet fonts as well as checking origin of alphabets to understand its meaning, which helped me to assimilate them to our digital life.
YK : Transforming the design from digital 3D format into physical one was challenging given physical product requires fine skill. So I have been working with talented craftsmen who also understand CAD so that physical design have exactly similar flavor with digital format that I made via CAD.
YK : I currently work in Japan and wanted to expand my field of work toward more international. Specifically I wanted to hear responses from people who have different background.
