Naoto Fukasawa

Japan

Naoto Fukasawa was born in yamanashi prefecture, japan, in1956. He graduated from tama art university's product design department in art and 3D design in 1980. Until 1988, fukasawa worked as a designer at seiko-epson corp. In 1989 he left japan for the United States. In San Francisco he joined a small office that had employed 15 people - ‘ID two’, the predecessor to ‘IDEO’, which now has 450 staff in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Boston, Chicago, London and Munich. After eight years fukasawa returned home. In 1996, he helped set up ‘IDEO’ in japan - a team of eight designers working mainly for the Japanese market. he stayed with it until December 2002. He went independent and in january 2003 he established ‘Naoto Fukasawa Design in Tokyo. Fukasawa joined the advisory board of the Japanese company ‘MUJI’. In December 2003 he set up a new product brands collaborating with the toy company, ‘Takara Co., ltd’, and publisher ‘Diamonds Co.,ltd’, in the area of home electric appliances and sundry goods design. As head of design of this new range of products, he now develops his ideas elaborated in past years workshops. ‘Plusminuszero’ designs and produces domestic objects, from umbrellas to electronics. The initial collection includes about 20 pieces a humidifier, LCD screen, mini disc player, torch,rug, electric coffee maker, telephones, a toaster… Naoto Fukasawa is a lecturer in the product design department musashino art university and tama art university in tokyo. Naoto Fukasawa's designs have won more than 50 design awards in europe and america. His design includes wall mounted cd player / Muji,and Infobar / AuKDDI. In his recent works, there are neon / auKDDI and twelve / Issey Miyake / Seiko. 

Other than japanese projects, there is a range of projects with italian, german and other european companies.