Oita | Oita Essentials

A booklet produced for the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo to introduce Oita Prefecture to visitors from Japan and abroad. I was responsible for planning and proposal writing from the public tender stage, through to the overall direction, editing, writing, and production management of the publication. Taking on a public tender project of this scale as an individual is, perhaps, uncommon. Since the Expo, the booklet has been put to wide use in settings where Oita is introduced to visitors — at facilities popular with tourists across the prefecture and at the prefectural government offices.

This was a project commissioned by Oita Prefecture, formally titled “Oita Regional Resource Materials Compilation.” Rather than prescribing places to visit or tourist routes, we wanted to leave room for readers to discover their own Oita — and with that in mind, developed the concept of “a reference collection in the form of a visual book.”

We also placed emphasis on immediacy and visual impact strong enough to hold its own in an expo environment saturated with information from around the world. The aim was to create something people would want to keep close — something with the quiet presence of a local history book, the kind that finds a place on a shelf and gets picked up again years later.

The booklet is structured in two halves: the first 68 pages unfold like a photography book, while the final 32 pages bring together thumbnails and text. The design separates two modes of engagement — the first half for instinctive looking, the second for reading carefully about whichever images caught your attention. Photographs vary in size and placement throughout, avoiding the monotony of a reference document and pursuing the visual interest of a photobook. Text is presented in both Japanese and English.

Almost all of the material featured was sourced from a survey Oita Prefecture conducted across its municipalities, the kind of well-known subjects that have been photographed many times over, with images similar to those already in wide circulation. Simply reproducing that would have had little meaning. Since the booklet was also expected to reach local residents, we wanted photographs that would prompt even people who live there to see their surroundings anew, to feel that the place they call home is somewhere genuinely worth being proud of. For that reason, we chose to work with a photographer whose fresh eye could reframe the familiar. For those who don’t know Oita, somewhere they want to visit. For those who do, somewhere they can take pride in. We hope the booklet offers something of both.

The website carries the world of the booklet directly into a static layout, and includes photographs that didn’t make it into the print edition. As a condition of the project, the site needed to be suitable for display on screens during the Expo, so the top page features a slideshow of photographs cycling through in sequence. Content is organized into four categories — hot springs and nature, history and culture, food, and other — allowing visitors to browse the material at a glance. With generous use of white space and a calm, unhurried layout, the site shares the booklet’s quiet presence: a place to simply look.

Specifications: B5 / 100 pages (68pp color + 32pp single color) / perfect binding / bilingual Japanese-English / 5,000 copies

Distribution: Oita Prefecture Booth, “Treasure Island KYUSHU” zone, EXPO Messe “WASSE,” Osaka-Kansai World Expo, September 3–5, 2025.  Also distributed at various locations throughout Oita Prefecture.