Manabu Kawada was born in Tokyo in 1968. Upon graduation from Chiba University, Faculty of Engineering, he joined Yamaha Corporation’s Product Design Laboratory in 1992. He was involved in designing a variety of products including both acoustic and digital musical instruments, audio equipment, and sporting goods, as well as brand identity.
With nine years of experience at Yamaha, he moved to UK to earn an MA in Product Design from the Royal College of Art. In 2003, he returned to Yamaha, and after working as a manager of digital product design and serving as a director of Yamaha Design Exhibition at Milano Salone from 2005 to 2008, he became the general manager of Product Design Laboratory in 2008.
The design philosophy of Yamaha was established in 1987, the year Yamaha celebrated its 100th anniversary. It consists of 5 keywords: Integrity, Innovative, Aesthetic, Unobtrusive, and Social responsibility, which as a whole, emphasizes creating new design values for contemporary lifestyle while respecting the long history of musical instruments and global music culture.
Inheriting this philosophy, Kawada is strongly motivated to enhance the value of Yamaha design identity as a global brand by further developing unique design concepts, through the process of analyzing what is at the essence of a musical instrument. For example, Yamaha designers do not use the word “consumer” or “user” but prefer to use “player”. Similarly, “playability” is used instead of “usability”. They consider the beauty of products from both “player’s view” and “audience view”. His goal is to establish Yamaha’s product as a “lifelong partner”, rather than just a good tool.
On an individual basis, Kawada has won the gold prize in The Memorial Art Competition for the Disaster at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1997. He has actively participated in international design exhibitions across England, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Scotland and Japan.
Yamaha is the world's largest and most comprehensive manufacturer of musical instruments .The Group's businesses span a wide range of activities, from manufacturing of a full line of instruments, both acoustic and digital, professional audio (PA) equipment, audio products and other businesses in the domains of musical instruments, music and audio, to businesses involving network-related devices, semiconductors and components.
