The Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition has developed the EXPO 2025 Design System to be utilized in Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan.
The purpose of the design system is to integrate the Expo’s various interfaces and provide a consistent experience that transcends the boundary between analogue and digital. We hope the experience provided by the EXPO 2025 Design System will help the Expo deliver enjoyment to as many people as possible.
The Expo’s design system is structured to grow and evolve like an organism. We adopted this structure based on the idea that we need a “living” design system with dynamic rather than static elements in order to embody the Expo’s theme of “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.”
A consistent brand experience will be designed from a holistic approach. The Expo will have not only a physical venue but also a virtual venue. The design will enable visitors to enjoy the same Expo brand experience through physical elements such as plane surfaces, video streams, and merchandise as well as virtual technology such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
From design as a rule to design for exploring possibilities. The Expo’s theme is “People’s Living Lab; A laboratory for a future society.” Therefore, the design system is equipped with the experimentalness and innovation for exploring the possibilities of future design. We have adopted a design process that allows people and machines to co-create by leveraging algorithms and other technology. The design system will be updated like software going forward.
The Tower of the Sun, the symbol of the Japan World Exposition Osaka 1970, symbolizes the energy generated by all living things in the past, present, and future. We aim to create new features unique to the Expo by developing a design system that incorporates this dynamic energy and the playfulness seen in Osaka and Kansai.
The design elements are ID, which symbolizes individual lives, and GROUP, which symbolizes a future co-created by diverse forms of life. ID and GROUP are designed to have the potential to function as an open system. A “margin” has been left in the design to ensure expandability and encourage lots of people to participate and co-create.
In order to explore the possibilities of co-creation by humans and technology in the future, we have structured a design system that combines human-based and technology-based elements. The logo is based on the cell motif: a cell is born, the cell undergoes division and multiplication, and life grows and evolves. First, we designed an algorithm to visualise this system of life. The design system is capable of simultaneously providing 3D shapes that can be applied to virtual spaces such as the Virtual Expo and flat 2D images that are used in planar design. The design is not based entirely on technological elements. We intentionally had human designers make the final adjustments (e.g., parameter adjustment, shape selection) to create a design process that involves human intervention. It is a co-creative design process that leaves room for humans and machines to interact.
The Expo’s design system represents eternal time and the flow of life. The diverse forms of life that give colour to our everyday lives teach us the brilliance of life that is never normalised, not by forming a single centre but by endlessly connecting with and separating from each other. The beauty created through the fusion and resonation of different things will lead us to a new future.
The Japanese have believed that life exists in all things since ancient times. This includes not only humans and animals but everything from insects, stones, and grains of rice to every leaf that falls on the riverbed. If we extend this world view to our modern age, one could say that new life exists in things created by technology such as AI and bioengineering. Each one of us exist as an individual and member of society in a world filled with a countless number of lives. Life exists at an individual level as well as a collective level. In order to express this idea, we have adopted a design system that can function as both an individual part and a whole entity.
Connections are becoming stronger and stronger every day in our highly networked world. Meanwhile, disunity and opposition are accelerating as if to reject excessive connections. We are not only seeing growing disunity between people in the form of disputes and inequality, but also conflicts between humankind and nature in the form of environmental destruction and epidemics. The relationship between people and our bloated social system is precarious too.
We believe the key to relieving this tension is circulation. All forms of life are neither completely connected with nor separated from each other. They keep changing while meeting and parting with one another. Eventually, the circulating forms of life are fused, creating a new existence from the chaos. This design system does not represent a nature-centric, system-centric, or anthropocentric future; it represents a bio-centric future characterised by the circulation of brilliant life.
The EXPO 2025 Design System is structured from three major design elements: “ID” that represents individual life, “GROUP” that represents communities made up of multiple forms of life, and “WORLD” that represents an ecosystem where diverse forms of life coexist in harmony. These elements have been chosen as they correspond to the concept of “cell,” which is the basic idea underlying the Expo’s logo. The three elements of ID, GROUP, and WORLD are designed to not only symbolise the Expo’s concept in a decorative role, but also to play a functional role in future broad development of the concept.
Individual life that grows and evolves
ID is the smallest unit of the design elements, primarily used to represent the individual. ID symbolises individual life and transforms into various forms according to the growth stage of life. The state of an original cell (Lives), the growth phase (Growth), and the stage of evolution into diverse forms of life (Evolution)—each process that life experiences is represented in the design.
Community where different lives gather to co-create the future
GROUP is a design element that represents community, a group of IDs of different colours and shapes. GROUP symbolises co-creation of a future society, which is one of the important aspects of the Expo, and represents the individual processes for a community to design a future society. Different characters meet (Join), engage in open-minded discussion (Sync), and begin acting together toward the future (Act). Ideas are created from the open relationship between individuals, leading to changes for a better future.
Ecosystem where diverse forms of life fuse together and resonate
WORLD is a design element that symbolises a future ecosystem. Just as the world each one of us sees looks different, this element is characterised by a variety of expressions. It can be developed into countless applications by freely cutting out parts from a large core graphic. WORLD appears in several different forms—Inochi, Umi, Noyama, and Hikari. The idea behind WORLD is to celebrate our everyday lives in which we see the same world from different perspectives and in different colours.
Inochi is the main core graphic. It represents life growing through repeated cell division. The graphic features primary colours that represent cells, conveying the vigor and brilliance of life.
Umi vividly depicts the harmony of life undersea. Seaweed swaying at the seabed, sea fish with shiny scales, the deep blue sea, and the light blue of the shore. It shows how the ocean functions as one big organism.
Noyama is a core graphic that represents the hills and fields. Young leaves sprouting in the field, fresh verdure covering the mountain, and the light blue of clear water flowing through the valley. The graphic features sub colours that represent the beauty of life in the hills and fields.
Hikari represents the ecosystem of life created from the energy of light. The light of dawn, sunlight shining on tree leaves, and burning sunset. It depicts the power of various kinds of light that surround us.
The combinations of the WORLD core graphics and official logo are designed in a way that allows utilisation in a range of formats. They can be used for banners and merchandise as well as in various settings such as websites and videos, heightening dynamism and producing a sense of liveliness and celebration.