19.Noda Nagi  Hanpanda circa 2008

I was fortunate to collaborate with Noda Nagi in the early 2000s, having heard about this young genius art director and her work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Laforet Harajuku and others during the early-2000s creative peak of TV advertising. While working for her big clients, Noda also found time to design two books of the 20-volume series Street Design Files, a global collection of ‘ubiquitous but unrespectable design,’ which I edited. , One of the bookswas PORTABLE ECSTACY, which treated vibrators and dildos from a design perspective. A separate project was our photobook SPERM PALACE, about the Toba secret treasure museum (part of which features on the third floor of MORA). In 2007 Noda launched her creation Hanpanda, a series of dolls in various sizes comprising a half panda and other animals. It became a major hit. Noda passed away in 2008, aged just 34.