VI design for an award-winning bookstore of “a Single Room with a Single Book”

Yoshiyuki Morioka, the owner of Morioka Shoten Co., Ltd. Ginza worked as a bookstore clerk for eight years in Kanda, a quarter known as Tokyo’s centre of second-hand bookstores. Morioka then went independent, opened his own store and ran a number of exhibitions. This experience eventually led him to an idea of “a bookstore with a single book”. He believed that a single book will offer deeper a understanding and closer relationship with the reader as well as the essential pleasure of book reading.

The birth of “a bookstore with a single book” was brought about by a rather unique encounter. On 2nd September 2014, Masamichi Toyama (CEO of Smiles Co. Ltd.) gave a lecture at “Takram academy”, a serial lecture event run by Takram. With “New Business” as the theme of the lecture, every attendee presented an idea which could win a business opportunity if the idea was bought by Toyama. Morioka attended the event and presented his idea with only one sheet of presentation which said, “Regeneration of Bookseller Atom → A bookstore with a single book”. This very incident brought a path to his ideal book store he has dreamt for many years.

When Morioka was still a bookstore clerk in Kanda, Tokyo’s center of second-hand bookstores, he happened to find an old building constructed in early Showa period. Not only did he fall in love but he immediately signed a contract to rent a room, which later became the first store of Morioka Shoten in Kayabacho. Back then, even after its launch, the store did not have a logo or mark; but instead, the store always printed its name and address, in the same size and typeface, whenever they needed to be identified on leaflets or their website. This shows how much he considered the location as a core value of the store.

Also, when the negotiation to co-establish the firm in 2014, Toyama finally agreed to invest in the venture when he was guided to the venue in Ginza, understanding the cultural and historical value of the building, and possibilities opening a bookstore there could bring about.

Through discussing with Morioka, Takram thought that the character of the location, or genius loci, had been and would be a very important factor for him, thus should be reflected to the logo design. To be specific, Takram added a message of “a bookstore with a single room” into rhombic shape.

The logo is composed with rather long text; the purpose is in showing the location (the address) to reflect Morioka’s vision. Below are what are included in the logo:

Company Name
Part of branding statement
Address

Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single book
available at a time, for six days.

Morioka Shoten is a bookstore with a single room
with an event to gather every night.

Morioka Shoten,
a single room with a single book

To plan and organise various events and businesses, Morioka Shoten initiated a “Planning Room”, whose leader was Morioka, with members which included Tomoya Yoshida of AZ Holdings, Kotaro Watanabe and Kotaro Yamaguchi of Takram. The team worked on different themes including events, design activities, goods production and more.

In 2014, Yoshida, then an editor at BNN Inc., published a Japanese translation of a book by Leonard Koren “Wabi-Sabi for artists, designers, poets & philosophers”. For this book, both Morioka and Watanabe participated in the project by contributing afterword essays. The encounter of Takram and Morioka was thus brought about by Yoshida, who also was a part of the creative process in the entire branding project.