talking
2007.11
produced by h concept
For these soy sauce, salt, and pepper containers, nendo decided to differentiate between the three through a combination of sight and sound, or words as sound.
Instead of relying on symbols and letters, the mouth of each container is the shape that a human mouth would make when saying the name of each product: "yu" for "shoyu", which means "soy sauce" in　Japanese, "shi" for "shio", which means salt, and "ko" for "kosho", which means "pepper".
In an age when we rely increasingly on e-mail for communication, and conversation fades from the dinner table, "talking" subtly links people and things through the power of the texture and sound of spoken Japanese.
photo by Masayuki Hayashi