Design Festa 25: Tokyo Art Festival 2007

Design Festa 25 time! I got four free tickets from the household agency so obviously I had to go. I met with Kelly and Kevin at Shinagawa to take the Yurikamome line to the Tokyo Big Sight, the famous inverted-pyramid-event-hall. Inside, there was a long queue of people waiting for their turn to buy a ticket. Kelly had two additional tickets with him and gave them to a Western couple. Of course we jumped the queue and entered through the colourful gate. It was my first time at this event.

Design Festa 25 filled several halls and two floors including an outside arena for bands and other performers. There were a lot of booths selling postcards, t-shirts, stylish bags, shoes and jewellery. I guess I could easily spend 20000 yen there. One of the stands that attracted our interest did sell t-shirts with ad spoofs like “Star Wars Coffee” (instead of Starbuck’s Coffee). The booth of “Unit of Land” did sell some nice penguin shirt. Stands are not sorted in any way, meaning that one could sell goth clothes while the next one has some flower power bags on offer.

Lots of items were quite small like the pandas in a match box. One of the best things about Design Festa is that you can meet the artists personally and most also had a card with their web address. Very nice! I chatted with two artists: A young woman who was interested in my camera and another woman who sold postcards (among other things). I explained to her that Kelly is a “postcard man” – and he really bought a lot of postcards!

A large area on the second floor was reserved for the food stands. Noting artsy, just fast food from around the world. Almost no vegetarian meals, though. Also on the second floor: A tough looking guy getting burn marks and injuries from a makeup artist, live painting and some music performances.

On the first floor there was a mass drum performance with everything that could be used as drums. It was almost closing time and many stands were already deconstructed when I decided that I really need to have that penguin shirt. I quickly ran through the rows and I was lucky because the one stand that sold these t-shirt was still there. Besides the shirt I also bought three postcards which look awfully kawaii.

Design Festa is still being held, check out more information on their website (Japanese, English).