A graphic design studio in Tokyo, Japan.
Everyone is looking. Screens, lenses, feeds, the stranger across the train carriage. NLM draws people who have decided not to be seen — and look better for it.
Every figure we draw hides their face — behind a block of colour, a stack of letters, a smear of ink. What is left is posture, clothes and attitude: enough to know exactly who they are, and nothing to recognise them by.
Every piece starts as a design, not as a product. It is drawn, cut back and redrawn until nothing is left that does not need to be there. Every figure is invented, and any word on a shirt is a real one.
Tokyo is the easiest city in the world to be looked at and never seen. The designs are drawn here, sent across the Pacific as a file, and printed to order in the United States — a shirt exists only once someone has asked for it.
Be seen. Not looked at.
See the works