Akane Kikuchi

Founder of KiQ / Gesture Artist / Creative Director / Expo 2025 Artist

Profile

Drawing on backgrounds in both design and Japanese culture, she explores the emotions and relationships embedded in human gestures and behavior. At KiQ, she reads feelings and atmospheres that words alone cannot convey and brings them into spatial, experience, and technology design.

Biography

Born in Miyagi Prefecture. At 18, she moved to New York to study design. She later began training as a geisha to explore the culture of her own country. Influenced by the movements and customs of the tatami room, she studied Japanese traditions including ikebana, tea ceremony, Kamigata-mai dance, and calligraphy.
She founded Akane Kikuchi Design in 2016.
In 2018, she presented IKEBANA VR EXPERIENCE at SXSW in the United States, an artwork expressing a dialogue between life and the mind through the discipline of ikebana.
In 2019, Gokuraku Jodo AR, a work exploring memory and views of life and death, was selected by the Japan Media Arts Festival. Its attempt to visualize Buddhist ritual objects and a monk's teachings received particular recognition.

In 2020, she founded KiQ.
That same year, she led campus art direction for Kaishi Professional University in Niigata and branding for KAISHI LAB. She also presented a permanent artwork and spatial design in Osaka.
Also in 2020, she was selected as a TEDx speaker. Under the theme of "Unspoken Experiences," she shared with a global audience a renewed understanding of Japanese aesthetics and shosa as a form of communication.
In 2022, she announced a collaborative project with Hiroshi Ishiguro, a leading figure in android research. Centered on shosa and the future of humanity, the ongoing project designs and continually updates the gestures and behavior of androids. It received extensive media coverage in Japan and overseas.
That same year, at the Davos conference, she designed the shosa of an android modeled on a member of Japan's National Diet and proposed new ways for future leaders to behave.

Her experience, installation, and spatial design work has been presented in Tokyo, Osaka, the United States, South Africa, and other locations in Japan and abroad. Her practice confronts moments that transcend racial and linguistic barriers, discovers new meaning in Japan's traditional tacit knowledge, and shares those discoveries through her own perspective. She specializes in making intangible values—such as Japanese culture and shosa passed on to future generations—visible through experience, and communicates this work internationally.
For Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, she was appointed art director and experience designer, with plans to present a work exploring technology and culture as a way to convey the value of shosa to the world.

Expertise

Spatial Design
Experience Design
Shosa Research
Concept Design

Career

2016 Left Daily Fresh and founded Akane Kikuchi Design
2016 Presented Tokyo Color
2017 Presented Natsuiro, LUMINE.
2017 Presented a work themed around the World Heritage site of Okinoshima in collaboration with DOCOMO
2017 Exhibited Tokyo Color at MATSUYA GINZA
2018 Presented the AI robot KIBIRO KABUKI in collaboration with FRONTEO
2018 Presented IKEBANA VR EXPERIENCE at SXSW
2018 Created the new visual identity for Keio University School of Medicine
2018 Branded SHINRA in collaboration with RIKEN
2018 Developed FUREL, a product that expresses Edo Komon patterns through touch
2018 Presented new branding for siroca
2018 Presented TSURU in collaboration with NOUSAKU
2018 Presented BLUE at Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel
2019 Presented Gokuraku Jodo AR / purelandaltAR in collaboration with a Buddhist priest in Ojiya, Niigata
2019 Presented FUJIOKA'S EMAKI, branding for Fujioka Kindergarten
2019 Presented branding for the wine label EXCECIEL
2020 Jury member, WORLD OMOSIROI AWARD
2020 Jury member, SXSW (event canceled)
2020 Presented the campus-wide creative direction for Kaishi Professional University
2020 Presented the creative direction for KAISHI LAB
2020 Founded KiQ
2020 Presented the spatial design The City of Kasane on the 5th floor of Shinsaibashi PARCO
2020 Direction for KAISHI PROFESSIONAL DESIGN received a DFA Merit Award
2020 Speaker / Director, TEDx Unspoken Experiences
2022 Presented Shosa Future Dialogue, a joint project with leading android researcher Hiroshi Ishiguro
2023 Appointed Chief Creative Director of Sugi Pharmacy
2024 Appointed collaborating artist for Future of Life, a Signature Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai

Lectures

2020 What Is Japanese Design?
2020 How Does Communication Differ Between Japan and the Rest of the World?
2020 Finding Creative Ideas for Global Projects in the Age of AI
2020 What Is the Difference Between Verbal Expression and Nonverbal Communication?
2020 Designing the Nonverbal: Lessons from Hermès Customer Service
2021 The Nonverbal Communication Skills Job Seekers Need for Creative Careers
2021 Using Verbal and Nonverbal Expression in Communication Design
2021 Lessons from Shosa That Maximize Beauty
2022 Personal Branding Through Nonverbal Presence: Developing Leaders
2022 Why Culture Is Essential to Japanese Design and Service Design: Refining Tacit and Embodied Knowledge
2022 Empathy Design Every Creator Should Know
2022 Developing First-Rate Creative Directors in the Age of AI
2022 Methods of Contemporary Co-Creation: New Business × Design
2022 The Magic of Shosa for Job Seekers
2022 Shosa with Dignity in the Digital Age
2022 Inner Branding for Teams Through the Nonverbal Communication of Shosa
2023 Microcommunication Skills Leaders Need in the Coming Age of AI
2023 Interactivity in Humanoid Robots
2023 Implementing Shosa as Nonverbal Communication in Robot Dialogue
2023 Nonverbal Communication for First-Year Creators
2023 Changing the World Through Japanese Ways of Behaving
2023 The Power of Shosa in Designing Tacit Knowledge
2023 Shosa Activities for Better Team Communication
2023 The Relationship Between Japanese Digital Products and Shosa
2024 Visual Concepts for World-Class Artists
2024 Microcommunication Skills for Artists and Actors
2024 Distinguishing and Optimizing Verbal and Nonverbal Expression in Avatar Communication
2024 Future Dialogue: Digital Well-Being in the Age of AI—The Significance of Shosa That ChatGPT Cannot Express
2024 Future Dialogue: Design for Humanity—Humanity-Centered Design in the Age of AI
2024 Future Dialogue EDU × ART Conference: The Coexistence of Robots in Education × Art
2024 Future Dialogue U18: Future Robot Ideathon
2024 Bringing Shosa into Design: UI/UX and Branding Strategies for the Coming Era
2024 Customer Service in the Digital Age for the Retail Industry

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