Harukan is a project by Haruko (art) and Stefania (graphic design). The UNIVERSE stationery collection includes desk calendar, Anotebooks, planner and a small block notes to pin down all your thoughts. Our goal is to create objects that are unique, functional and sustainable. Born between Japan and Italy under the pandemic, Harukan's graphics are an expression of the friendship that allowed us to overcome the long winter of 2020. They are a way to remind ourselves of what is not easy, but still possible: 明るい未来 (akarui mirai), a bright future.
We are Haruko and Stefania. We met in London in 2011, working at the same jewelry house respectively as a jewelry and a graphic designer. Ours is a ten-year friendship which has only grown over the years despite the distance, not only thanks to personal affinity but also to our creative one.
The name Harukan (晴 冠) comes from the union of Haru (晴, first kanji of Haruko's name), and Kan (冠, first Kanji of Kanko, the Japanese name that Haruko and her family have chosen for Stefania.)
The Harukan project was born from the desire to join our creativity and cultural backgrounds in a work that is personal and authentic.
The visual concept of the UNIVERSE collection was developed for the first time in the winter of 2020, as a result of the pandemic and the days spent on Skype to fight fear and uncertainty together. Day by day, our project has become more and more concrete, and that first calendar has become Harukan: a brand that aims to produce stationery that is how we like it: unique, functional and sustainable.
Harukan symbolizes the future we are trying to build. "明るい未来" (Akarui mirai) is become the motto that we tell ourselves every day. "Remember your bright future."
A bright future does not seem within our grasp. The pandemic is only the last of the problems we must face in order to combat suffering and inequalities in our societies. We certainly don't think that our objects can revolutionize the world. But we hope to at least partially reproduce the relief we felt when we remembered what is beautiful in this universe, and that the possibility of change exists, however illusory it may seem at times.
Our friendship is, after all, an extraordinary coincidence.
