1. BRATTLE THEATER POSTER, Fall 2003. 2. An invitation to the season premiere of THE RALPH LOWELL SOCIETY, a donor’s society of WGBH, Fall 2005. “I had only three days to design this,” says Yokoyama, “including the time it took to organize the project, meet with clients, and deliver files. Reality!” 3. Commomorative stamps for 150TH anniversary of U.S./Japan relations, Fall 2003. 4. DVDS for TROIS COULEURS, Fall 2003. “Because each movie has a beautiful scene in blue, white, and red, I created photo collages that come with a postcard. When the DVD case is closed, only part of the image is visible,” she says. 5. BILINGUAL RASHOMON POSTER, in english and japanese, Spring 2004. “The challenge,” says Yokoyama, “was to visually match the types of these two languages. Based on the timeline on the left, the plot was visually structured by organizing the information vertically and horizontally.”

Tomoko Yokoyama, Associate Designer, WGBH Educational Foundation Latin Name: Designer Non-Nativus Age: 26 617.300.2616 | totototomoko.main.jp

Tomoko Yokoyama, associate designer at Boston’s WGBH Educational Foundation, says, “Design is the one thing I can do all day without getting bored.” Which is a stroke of good fortune, as Yokoyama is daily charged with producing a vast range of visual communications, both internal and external.

She has played a part in everything from logo design to building signage, but Yokoyama finds her work on WGBH’s educational materials to be resonant in a personal sense. She took her own education seriously enough to pursue a winding trajectory that begins in Japan and spans two states in the U.S. During her BA coursework in literature at Tokyo’s Rikkyo University, she spent a year at Kent State University in Ohio. Four years later, she earned a BS in design from Boston’s Northeastern University.

Northeastern University’s Kali Nikitas says that Yokoyama was well known for her “work ethic, commitment to design, and collegiality with her classmates.” This—not to mention the ease with which she slipped into the workforce—makes Yokoyama “a role model for our students.”

Yokoyama says her childhood in Japan informs her aesthetic sensibilities. She credits the decade she spent studying calligraphy, for example, with cultivating her passion for typography. As a nonnative English speaker, however, her skill with type in the U.S. was hard-won. Yokoyama typically pores over text before fully appreciating the complexity of its message. By virtue of her having worked hard to achieve it, however, typographical clarity is a hallmark of her designs.

In the short term, Yokoyama strives to infuse her work—every day—with beauty and clarity. But when she takes the long view, her goals reach over the same ocean she’s crossed more than once. “I hope to bring back what I learned here in the U.S. to Japan,” she says, “and teach students there a different way of seeing things.”
Tiffany Meyers