Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

This has been a week of stel­lar stu­dent work, and Jon Wong is no excep­tion. He has a par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for book and pub­li­ca­tion design, as evi­denced ear­lier by my post on his Exploradonia project. This new project, Beast in a Neon Cage, encom­passes not only that, but also illus­tra­tion, pack­ag­ing and more. A bit of back­ground from the designer him­self is below, but you can also check out his process post on ISO50 for more.

Beast in a Neon Cage is the name of a film fes­ti­val project for leg­endary cult direc­tor Seijun Suzuki. The name for the fes­ti­val is a metaphor for the char­ac­ters that appear in Suzuki’s films: gang­sters and crooks who on the sur­face appear civ­i­lized, but under­neath are wild beasts that are stuck in the “neon cage” of the Tokyo nightlife. Building on that idea and the psy­che­delic imagery of his films, the festival’s visu­als burst with color. The sharp angles reflect the on-screen chaos and the car­toon imagery hints at the dark humor that fre­quents Suzuki’s work. Finally, the pack­ag­ing of the prod­ucts uses raw wood on the out­side to mimic the sophis­ti­cated veneers of these char­ac­ters, but inside they explode with color, achieved through the use of var­i­ous sheets of col­ored plastic.