Yuki Tanaka— brand designer, Tokyo.

I went to Tama Art University in Tokyo and spent four years at a Sogetsu ikebana studio before landing in brand design through a side door — I think arrangement, balance, and negative space matter more than which Pantone you choose. Most identities I see in tech overstate their case. I try to undersell mine.

I started Cargo Studio in 2023 with my partner, a copywriter named Rin. We work in a converted concrete print shop in Musashino, take three engagements a year, and refuse anything that doesn't have a person attached at the other end — the work is too slow to do for a deck.

Outside the studio I cook, walk Tokyo at night, and keep an ikebana practice — ten arrangements a month, posted nowhere. The discipline of not publishing them is the part that matters.