APMT (apartment) is an art & design conference hosted by creative portal website CBCNET. Every time they feature people who are active in the front lines of their fields, and they give us pleasant unique sessions. The past line-up includes Toshio Iwai who introduced his “TENORI-ON” for the first time, Takeshi Hamada, Semitransparent Design, overseas ni9e and WeWorkForThem. This is one of the leading design conference in Japan with the thrilling line-up.

November 17th of this year, “APMT3 – What’s your color?” was held. Veterans with broad knowledge and skills of expression. Such as Mamoru Kano who is a chairperson of Zugakousaku, Hudson Powell from London, Exonemo whose territory is no longer on the web only, Dainippon Type Org. that plays with typography, Tomokazu Matsuyama who is in full activity in NYC. About 200 design/art freaks got together at Bankart 1929 in Yokohama, they had a ball with a series of design talks in chilly sea wind.

Mamoru Kano appears at first, who also belongs to a picture production group WOW. Each work series of screensaver, “The 20th Century Voyage” or “Hotel Gadget“, keeps ticking away the perpetual minutes at random so that it makes us to realize a sort of once in a lifetime beauty. “What is a valuable work to me? It is something impressed itself on memory.” I seem to see the bare bones of Mr. Kano’s representation which is very witty and poetic. He says he is going to get down to client work consciously with artistic taste the hereafter. “There is always something embodied by because of corporative or because of individual.” I am glad to see a way he works back and forth with art between client and private that suggests me a creation in new era.

The second is Jody and Luke brothers a.k.a. Hudson Powell from London. With the variety of careers in typography and virtual reality, they have a wide range of work from graphic design to animation and interactive. For example, “Responsive Type” (Exhibit at SOSO, 2005) they displayed letters on different sizes of screen in most legible shape. Their design resonates media itself far beyond its territory. The session makes me feel great expectation that they manage to deal anything (in a light mood) to output as pick up an input.