If you're the sort of person who likes art museums but loves art museum gift shops, then you're likely to be familiar with the work of Yoshie Watanabe and Ryosuke Uehara, two designers who are currently the subject of an exhibition at Tokyo's Ginza Graphic Gallery.
As senior staff members at Tokyo-based design company Draft, the pair are responsible for a string of popular items made under the company's D-Bros line of products, including "A Path to the Future," a series of packing-tape rolls that are designed to look like a four-lane highway, or a pair of train-tracks; and "Like the Wind Like a Song," a notebook with a page-marking ribbon that extends from the stick of a leaping rhythmic gymnast depicted on the front cover.
The most popular of Watanabe and Uehara's creations — one that has sold over 600,000 packs in museum shops around the world to date — is a delightfully simple flat-pack plastic vase called "Hope Blossoming Forever."