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I

grew up as a third-generation Japanese American sansei in Hawaii on the island of Kauai: very rural,

country, small-town. Hard work, education, and achievement were central beliefs in my family.”

Hori’s father worked as a surgical technician, his mother as a nurse at a dispensary. “Dinner

conversations often involved descriptions of surgery, trauma, laboratory procedures, and disease.”

Accordingly, Hori was primed for a future in medicine or science. “I was a science geek in high school.

As a sophomore, I did a National Science Foundation research project on testing toxicity of a local

soft coral toxin on lymphoma cells. As a junior, I did research with the Hawaii Heart Association,

sequencing a particular protein from bovine heart mitochondria—stuff that gave me a preview of what

might be ahead for me.”

After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Hawaii. “I got as far as sophomore

pre-med when I took an art history course—Art 101—as a humanities requirement, and here is where

things radically changed. Art presented vistas I had never been exposed to. It was a totally alien activity.

This was part of its allure and excitement. More classes followed, and I found myself gravitating

toward graphic design, where a certain amount of precision and certainty was a necessary part of

the process. Also, there was the prospect of commercial and practical application that minimally

placated my parents’ concern of self-support and future livelihood.”

But the initial excitement didn’t last. “I made it through to the last year of the design program and found

myself with a kind of buyer’s remorse. The excitement and expressive potential I had initially latched

on to were slowly being reduced the further I progressed in the primarily Swiss-based program.” Instead

of finishing the final year of the design program, he switched his major to photography and finished

his degree in 1987.

“

After a youth spent preparing for a future in medicine,

Allen Hori discovered art and went on a journey of learning

that would lead him from Hawaii to Michigan to Holland

to New York and from design to photography and back again.

ALLEN

HORII

1

1982

+

1999 NOW

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Job no:81378-5 Title : RP_All Access (New PB Verdions) Client : Pro-vision

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HE MAINLAND “It took seven years to earn my BFA and realize that getting to

the mainland—out of Hawaii—was essential and that continuing school was

probably the only way I was going to find a larger landscape.” He continued

with independent studies in photography at the University of Hawaii until 1987 and

got a job to make ends meet. “I worked as a ‘camera lout’—operating a stat camera

at a typography house called The Other Type. I moved up to paste-up artist and

finally to designer. After three years of this, I applied to graduate school in graphic

design, returning to the commercial and more-bankable-than-photography route.”

To his delight, he was accepted into the program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art

and moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

C

RANBROOK Hori was immediately fascinated with the school. “This was

graphic design like I had never seen nor imagined. It involved theory, thinking,

commitment, analysis, experimentation, and, for me, continuing with making

photographs as well. I realized graphic design could be read in much the same way

that photography could be read—this was the first most liberating moment—where

typography had the power to communicate more than the actual words it represented,

where additional meaning was formed on the intentions of the designer.”

The second year was dedicated entirely to producing designs. The experience had

a lasting impact on Hori’s aesthetic. “Making work, experimenting with thresholds of

1987

27

1988

28

1989

29

1982+

AIDS Matrices, spread from Émigré 10 While at Cranbrook, Hori had the

chance to design for Émigré magazine—“Lots of bitmap, very little assimilation

or integration of type, typography, and image.”

Sutural Rupture, spread from Émigré 12 “This issue was about stripping—

mechanical lithography in the offset printing process. I took it to mean, among

other things, the stripping or unlearning of convention and tradition in design,

becoming new and naked at Cranbrook.”

Fiber Content, exhibition

catalog “This piece is still one

of my favorites. I played with

the word progression content>

contain>containment. The

catalog assumes to be a card-

board box while the graphic

elements describe the change

in form through forces of

constraining containment.”

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