This issue of WOW magazine will celebrate 200 releases. This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the Visual Design Studio WOW. In preparation for the commemorative 200th issue, the three members of the WOW executive team, Hiroshi Takahashi, Mamoru Kano, and Kosuke Oho, who had not been able to gather together since the pandemic, gathered at the head office in Shibuya for a three-way talk. As it has been exactly 10 years since these three appeared on the cover of AXIS magazine (issue 156), AXIS editor-in-chief Masahiro Kamijo joined them as the facilitator. The three way-talk lasted nearly two hours and discussed WOW’s origins, evolution, and future. Nobuyuki Hayashi, a journalist who has been covering WOW since its early days, will share the contents of the three-way talk in a special article as part of WOW magazine and WOW note.

So, what kind of people are these two talents that you were charmed by, and what makes WOW different from other digital production companies? “I think there are different ways to climb the same mountain", is what Creative Director Oho often says. There are more than a few digital production companies that focus on technology. At WOW, however, "we value sensibility and the spirit of the picture more than technology." Both Oho and Kano’s backgrounds are in the arts. To start with they always put the spirit of the picture and the expression first. Then, to give that vision shape, they learn and use the necessary technologies as required instead of creating their works with technology as the starting point. Right now, WOW has many programmers and other technical employees, but most of them are also people who resonate with WOW's sensibility as the focal point of expression and have gathered together to create such things, or people who are interested in art and design. “This expression works well. There is a kind of unspoken agreement”. This is another one of the “miracles” of WOW says Visual Art Director Kano. Under Oho's direction, employees share a mutual understanding of what is good, even though there are no clear rules or regulations. For example, the production process naturally moves toward "expression-driven computer graphics," avoiding "overly technological expression". Takahashi also probes that this shared sense of value may also contribute to their extremely low turnover compared to other digital production companies.

Conveying the trajectory of our ventures and thought processes lying behind them, the information communicating activities of DVD and books we have done up until then, were finally collated together in the WOW magazine. After that, WOW expanded its horizons through the release of apps, creating physical artworks you can touch such as the Japanese sword art aikuchiand BLUEVOX!! series, as well as creating and selling artworks. Oho says that through this, the company has been able to consult with clients to meet their objectives not only with video solutions but a much wider range of proposals that includes methods that don’t use video at all, such as spatial exhibitions and creating applications.

WOW will become more commonplace in people’s lives. Currently, WOW is putting all of its effort into the special anniversary exhibition that is going to give us a glimpse into the next 25 years. For more in-depth topics from this talk on the origin, evolution, and future of WOW, please visit theWOW note which will be published at the same time as this e-magazine.