Silhouettes, sensuality and silence - Yoshihiro Yagi's art of undressing brands
Yoshihiro Yagi, Art Director at Dentsu, was awarded a Gold Lion in the Industry Craft category at Cannes. His case study for Nikka Whisky demonstrates that true brand leadership isn’t created by labels, but by attitude—and the power of emptiness.
On the beach of the Croisette, between shadow and light, m&k met Yoshihiro Yagi. The multi-award-winning Japanese art director had just won a Gold Cannes Lions for his project with Nikka Whisky. What he told us was more than just a success story - it was an aesthetic and philosophical assessment.
Yagi, whose artistic influence goes back to the arts of his home town of Kyoto, believes in design as an expression of inner attitude. Reduction, not volume, is the way to the essence of a brand. Emptiness - a central principle of Japanese aesthetics - plays a key role in his work: it leaves room for interpretation and opens up inner resonance spaces. "Emptiness has a power that attracts people," says Yagi. He uses this power not to fill brands, but to liberate them.
This also applies to the case for Nikka Whisky: Instead of product shots or testimonials, the campaign is dominated by Silhouetteswhich appear as light projections over unlabeled whisky bottles. They are distorted, fleeting shadows of people - no faces, no status symbols, no attributions. What remains is an invitation to projection. "Whisky that loves life" is the accompanying claim.
The project deliberately defies the conventions of classic alcohol advertising - and also Western expectations of brand aesthetics. Nikka, a traditional Japanese whisky brand, is not presented as a prestige product, but as an expression of an attitude to life. A drink that draws no boundaries between genders, age groups or social classes.
Yagi's aim is to turn business into art - and vice versa. This requires more than just beautiful design. It requires, as he says, "an inner compass". This compass is particularly important today when numbers and efficiency fail. Brands need to express meaning again, "their will, their pride, their culture". Not as an image, but as substance.
For Yoshihiro Yagi, creativity is a means of connection - with customers, with consumers, with the world. Whether as a lecturer at the Kyoto University of the Arts or as the father of two sons, he searches for meaning, not just visibility. The bottles he lights up are also a reflection of his attitude: transparent, permeable, clear.
