In this episode, we spoke with Kenjiro Kirton, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Hato.

It’s Saturday afternoon on the last day of The Design Conference in Brisbane. The beers are flowing, the heads are sore and the minds overloaded. Still, we found time to sit down with Kenjiro Kirton, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Hato.

Hato is a unique studio (both in London and Hong Kong) for the way they approach design. Focused on active play and community engagement, you could say their design is based on co-creation, or facilitation, with the end user — leading to some truly unique outputs.

For his part, Kenjiro is incredibly well-researched and curious, always putting the ‘why’ before the what. There are a lot of throwaway references in this episode that are well worth looking up, so have a notepad ready.

Matt was very kindly joined by Yasmin Naghavi (solicitor from Media Arts Lawyers and Alex Naghavi’s sister) and Ben Johnston (Alex’s boss — it all leads back to Alex). It was great to have these two on as they added extra depth to the conversation. Thank you so much for saying yes.

Thank you to the Design Conference for giving us access to their guests and check out streamtime.net.

Links:

Website: www.hato.co

Kenjiro Instagram: www.instagram.com/ken.hato

Hato Instagram: www.instagram.com/studiohato

Hato Press Instagram: www.instagram.com/hatopress

Start with a mark: https://campaignbrief.com/dad-reveals-2018-festival-iden

Hato D&AD Festival 18 identity: https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/hato-d-and-a-d-festival-2018-visual-identity-advertising-240418

Célestin Freinet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet

The Design Conference: https://www.thedesignconference.com.au