An exhibition of award winning digital graphic design for the year 2000 was organized by Canon at Spiral Garden, Aoyama. Unfortunately, it came and went so quickly that there was hardly time to get fingers to the keyboard. However, the winning entries can be seen on the awards website at: www.canon.co.jp/cdcc. It doesn't matter if you can't read the kana, just click on the bald head in the central red square and follow your mouse to whatever looks interesting.

Amazing images and really cool design will reward your visit. Your mouse pointer turns into a buzzing fly which is snapped at by a line drawn head in Yamazawa's page in the WEB section. Also in this section is the work of "Psion" whose simple shapes become a ballet of colour. Another prize winner in this section was "skateroom." Here elegant silhouettes of skateboarders doing tricks float across mauve and orange screens. Atsuko Uda's site, "Women in Summer," is an innovative, yet simple use of design to create a poetic "virtual" narrative.

The awards were divided into three areas -- print, movie and web. The awards website offers a good taste of each with digital movies in "Real-time" and "Quicktime" and samples of the print works, as well. However, as you click through this crescendo of creativity you might well ask, why is it that with so many cool digital artists about, the web (particularly commercial sites in Japan) is so devoid of good design.