Established in 1978, Mingei International Museum collects, conserves and exhibits arts of daily use – by anonymous craftsmen of ancient times, from traditional cultures of past and present and by historical and contemporary designers. Our goal is to connect our audience to a wide range of international and national arts and crafts of everyday use.

The mark incorporates the idea of people and art, together. The mark contains two major elements; a typographical portion and a graphical portion. The typographical portion is clean and legible to incorporated a feeling of accessibility by being clean and straightforward. The graphical portion is more fluid, more like a texture or pattern. This is the art side of the mark. It reflects the messy, used character of folk art to give it a unique, personal feeling.  The graphical element is also composed of various individual’s handwriting to create the sense of together-ness of various people. It implies the “international” aspect of the Mingei Museum.

The “Mingei” in the graphical portion may be difficult to read but that is why it is repeated in the typographical section of the mark. If it were to be clarified in the graphical portion then the interesting shape would be gone and it could no longer be the artistic portion of the mark.