At saisai 2021: Talk which sought for varied possibilities regarding the theme, we invited six designers and activists from home and abroad (Soohyun Yang, Dawoon Chung, Sofia Østerhus from Byggstudio, Hagiwara Shunya 萩原 俊矢, Youngshin Park, and Erich Brechbühl), who had studied design, life, environment and letters in different ways and asked them to share case studies and their own insight. The talk was designed in an online, contactless form due to the pandemic, to give more people the chance to participate in comparison to the workshop sessions. A total of 2,201 people signed up for the saisai 2021: Talk in advance and given that the event was free of charge, 1,577 participants actually logged into the event, which enabled communication with a lot more people than offline events had done so far.

Some may have found saisai 2020–2021 somewhat confusing this time as it stressed stories with keywords such as millennials, environmental issues, the Internet, media art, and living things, rather than dealing with letters and traditional methodology. Typography is a tool and methodology generally used by graphic designers. As the term janchi means a party, Typojanchi is naturally considered as a ‘typography feast’ and it also tends to be perceived as a feast that graphic designers organize and enjoy themselves at. Typographic activities are to beautify and make letters and information more legible on mobile messengers or email, and everyone is doing this in their own way—designers as well as non-designers. Today it is undeniable that new factors have come to be frequently used in this process, such as emojis and animations, which can be regarded as part of typography. I did not want to restrict the scope of visitors to this feast to graphic or typeface designers only, and supposed that it would need to reflect the broadening horizons of Typojanchi.

The posters and screens of this saisai feature stuff that looks like disassembled or recombined bodies. A subject matter like ‘bone and flesh’ symbolically displays typographic notions even though it does not directly handle types or layout. I wished to share that idea through the poster series that headline drawings, not letters, stirring the imagination; web pages for event information and registration; and many different designs on the video screen as well.