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I fell for Japan as a teenager, visited many times, then lived there for seven years, long enough to know the konbini (convenience store) is a cultural institution: open 24/7, constantly rotating seasonal products, and locked in a friendly rivalry over the best coffee and sweets.
My other obsession is Taisho and early Showa graphic design, and while searching for inspiration, I found the work of Sugiura Hisui, whose lithograph posters announced Mitsukoshi’s new spring collections a century ago. So I thought: how would Hisui create ads for today's convenience stores?
I turned his posters into a Recraft V4 Style and launched the Spring 2027 range of Hinata Mart, a fictional convenience store. The series pairs today’s bestsellers (fruit sandwiches, fried chicken, iced drinks, oden) with modern fixtures like the ATM and the self-serve coffee machine.
Hope you'll like it!
this is beautiful work
Thank you! Glad you like it :)
This intro already pulled me in — 7 years in Japan is the real credential for a konbini story! They're truly a cultural institution.
I can already feel the seasonal packaging + coffee rivalry angle. Did you use Recraft for the illustration style? Curious to see how you captured...
Thank you! Convini is still one of my priorities when I go back to Japan, especially for the coffee!
Regarding my process, I started with gathering inspiration from the era I wanted to represent. I own various vintage ad books from japan that I scanned, and saved reference...
The contrast between century old graphic design and modern ATM/coffee fixtures is so creative. Did the Recraft model handle the Japanese typography seamlessly?
Yes, Recraft replicated japanese typography without errors, surprisingly! I can read japanese and I was expecting errors, but it came out just fine :) My only mistake, as far as i know, was to forget counting the fingers, and one of the woman has 6 fingers… typical AI slop!
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another one
