Artist Bunpei Yorifuji (寄藤文平) is creating a series of manner posters for the Tokyo metro, around the theme of "Do It At Home". Yorifuji was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in 1973, and founded Bunpei Ginza in 2000 to specialize in mainly Art Direction, Illustration and Book Design.
Yorifuji's manners posters address the most common complaints heard by the Metro, such as people who apply makeup, party, sit on the floor, take up too much room, jump through the closing doors at the last minute, wear Everest-assault-sized backbacks and so on.
I have to chuckle at the rather awkward and sometimes double-entendre Engrish, but that's what gives them charm, I suppose. I even found a spoof poster.
Clicking through on the official website, and viewing all of the posters, I can see a trend: the middle-aged and distressed-looking couple present in some form in the posters is supposed to represent Mr. and Mrs. Everyman, and according to an interview I read, Yorifuji says their glasses make their emotions harder to read, letting the viewer assume they're upset by the bad manners in the poster.
What irks me about this set of posters however, is that there are plenty of middle-aged people with awful public manners but in this series it's almost always the children who are portrayed as the offenders. Yorifuji san, what about the drunken salarymen, the obatarians violently charging for seats or the malodorous gyoza-chompers?!
Click the thumbs below for the spoof poster and the official website.
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