"Manga" 2018-2019

Designers: Lai Couto, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, London, United Kingdom
Client: British Museum, London, United Kingdom

This groundbreaking temporary exhibition — the largest manga exhibition outside Japan — offers a new contemporary take on the British Museum’s collections. Featuring bespoke commissions by Japanese and European artists, the exhibition expands the public’s view of what manga can achieve.

Manga is a worldwide phenomenon, appealing to audiences of all ages and tackling such varied topics as the environment, sports, horror and gender and identity. The original translation of the characters for manga was ‘pictures run riot’ — associated with the great 19th-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai whose miscellaneous drawings of people, animals and nature were published as ‘Hokusai Manga’.

‘Manga’ celebrates manga’s diversity – across a variety of styles, subject matters, voices, identities and forms of expression – which lies at the heart of its appeal to people of all ages. Visitors meet the artists and editors who make manga happen, discovering the intricacies of this iconic artform. Manga pages swirl around visitors, propelling them on a journey through manga’s history, from 19^th century pioneers of manga to contemporary manga artists who delve into everything from sports to issues of gender and identity. Throughout this journey, visitors also interact with manga in a variety of ways, from reading manga books in a recreation of the oldest surviving manga bookshop in Tokyo; to watching animations by the famous manga film company Studio Ghibli; to having their photographs be ‘manga-fied’ in a special photo booth. 

The bold graphic form of manga necessitated bold, innovative graphic design. RAA’s graphics for ‘Manga’ take visitors inside the pages of a manga book, using large-scale, immersive banners to physically transport visitors into the world of manga. The banners’ various sizes and diverse styles echo the exciting, exuberant, visually-textured manga books, with their mix of smaller intimate panels and large, action-packed scenes. Unlike in many exhibitions that rely on physical partitions, these two-dimensional banners form the experience’s three-dimensional spaces. They create a layered spatial experience for visitors, energetically multiplying as manga’s range expands, forming intimate zones where visitors can interact more deeply with the exhibition, or fading away at strategic moments to create dramatic vistas across the gallery.

The intricacy of manga artists’ work is often hidden by the small scale of many manga books. RAA’s graphic design for Manga provokes visitors to reexamine manga’s status as an artform, presenting manga on a larger-than-life scale so that visitors can appreciate its vibrancy, complexity and diversity. The large overhead manga banners reveal each brush or pen stroke, stimulating visitors’ senses and creating visual connections and comparisons between the different styles of manga. Interspersed around Kawanabe Kyōsai’s Shintomiza Kabuki Theatre

Curtain as it winds around the perimeter of the gallery, they also emphasize the interplay between traditional brush art and modern manga. The artistic creativity and uniqueness of manga as an expressive form is made immediate and visceral.