To celebrate our 10th anniversaries, Standart collaborated with Acaia to bring you a limited-edition of their iconic Pearl Coffee Scale featuring illustrations by Japanese artist Kimiaki Yaegashi, whose work has been often celebrated in the pages of our magazine. Read the interview with the artist and discover more about his work, background and his coffee rituals.
Standart: Let’s imagine for a moment that we are meeting for the first time in a coffee shop and begin to have a conversation. How would you quickly recount your own biography and why you started working as an illustrator?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: I’ve been obsessed with drawing since I was a little boy, and it just sort of became my job. My hometown is Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, where Japanese folktales are popularly told, and this has influenced my style.
Standart: Were you encouraged to draw as a child? Who was your biggest supporter?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: When I was a child, I had a neighbour who had a cousin who was six years older than me, and one day he drew ‘Mobile Suit Gundam’ and ‘Ultraman’ smoothly in his notebook. It was magical to see the characters appear as if out of nowhere on the blank sheet of paper, and that is what inspired me to keep drawing. So, in a sense, it was that neighbour’s cousin who started it all.
Standart: Drawing already-existing characters is often the way we begin to draw. I, for instance, drew Batman unceasingly in my early years. Who were your favourite already-existing characters to draw as a child?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: Arale-chan, the protagonist in Akira Toriyama’s Dr. Slump. Toriyama’s early style was sophisticated and groundbreaking, unlike anything seen in Japanese manga before, and included a great deal of humour that struck a chord with many people, including me!
Standart: When did you start drawing original characters purely from your imagination?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: During an art class in primary school I was drawing Godzilla, and when my teacher saw it, he told me that it would be more fun to create original characters than to draw existing ones. This turned out to be true for me, and was extremely good and timely advice. I am now teaching character design at an art college alongside my illustration career, and I am passing on the teachings of my mentor to my current students.
Standart: What are your favourite sources for visual inspiration?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: Google’s image search is now indispensable for the collection of materials and sometimes even for inspiration. I have been playing with image generation AI lately, but it is still in a transitional phase, and it is actually the errors that it creates that are interesting to me. The emergence of these errors is similar to when we are excited to see what will come out of a capsule toy machine—exciting and unpredictable.
Standart: You combine adult themes with cuteness in your illustrations—cuteness that is not patronizing nor childish, but cuteness for adults. Do you consciously think of how to weigh out this balance in your work?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: The imperfect—something with flaws—is more real and relatable than something that is perfect. Perhaps the reason I always incorporate cuteness into my style is because I find the flaws attractive and, well, cute. People experience pain and sadness from time to time during their lives—it is human—but at least in my works, I try to make the world bright and joyful and make it so that people who see my works feel good.
Standart: What was your creative process when approaching this particular commission?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: First of all, I chose a cat as the motif for the character because it is an animal that is familiar to many people and lives faithfully to its desires. And since the first request was for a small illustration, I made it two-headed, so that it would look good even though it was small. I continued to brush up on that initial design, and the style became what it is today.
Standart: Why were you excited to work on this limited edition scale? What about Acaia made you want to do it?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: Because it was a unique and unprecedented combination. There was a natural harmony between Acaia’s design language and my art. Acaia’s simple design is easy to operate, and we will never get tired of using it every day. Being able to collaborate on this project to create a unique item that will be used daily in a beautiful way, as part of a ritual, was too good an opportunity to pass up!
Standart: What is your own coffee-making routine at home, or what is your favourite coffee shop to work or think in?
Kimiaki Yaegashi: Kichijoji in Tokyo, where I now live, is a place where city and nature are in harmony, and where many artists of expression live, including manga artists, scriptwriters, and novelists.
Thankfully, there are many cafes in my city, and I like to spend time thinking over a cup of coffee at whatever cafe I choose for a given day. I usually work alone in my workspace, so sometimes I travel to open my mind to new stimuli. My favourite cafe abroad is VCR in Kuala Lumpur; their iced lattes are exceptional.
Standart: Imagine yourself in old age: what would make you content with your life? Perhaps a particular achievement or having had a particular experience.
Kimiaki Yaegashi: As I mentioned earlier, I have been obsessed with drawing since I was a child, and so, when I’m in my old age, I would be happy in the knowledge that I had continued to draw right up to the moment of my death, and if in my final moments I could take a sip of good coffee, I would be even happier!
