Skull

Part of Nakajo’s skull-themed poster works / artistic poster series. It is  related to his long-standing exploration of skull imagery and his planned Skull Festival exhibitions. This is also featured in the Revival! Yokoo Tadanori's Skull Festival exhibition from September 13th to December 28th 2025.

In this work, the “skull” is abstracted to a block-like form. At first glance, it may look like a normal cube-shaped building! There are also certain framing elements around the skull, which add to the graphic quality, made to look like doodles. Nakajo’s skull-themed posters are part of a bold exploration of life and death told through graphic art, and in the Skull Festival series he turns something usually scary into a symbol full of vitality and meaning. The skulls and skeletons in his designs are not just morbid, they work together with images of memory, such as photos of classmates or skies scarred by war, to show how death casts a shadow even as life overflows. Nakajo shows that posters in Japan could be brave, conceptual and experimental, not just advertisements, and that idea has influenced many designers who followed him.