Craftsmanship is the heartbeat of luxury brands. Since its inception in 1989 Lexus has used Takumi Craftsmanship to create better quality, more highly crafted cars. This can be seen in every single vehicle from the CT to the LS. There’s nothing crafted like a Lexus. Our brief was to bring this to life in an original and exciting way.

Many brands have told stories about what craftsmanship looks like, but few explain why they put such value on craftsmanship or about the people that dedicate their life to it.

The lens we chose to do it through was a group of master craftsman called ‘Takumi’. We were intrigued by their mindset, dedication, and their constant desire for self-improvement. At this moment in time, where Japan is on the rise, it also felt culturally rich to tell stories which brought to life this uniquely Japanese idea.

It takes 10,000 hours of practice for humans to become expert. In Japan, there are craftspeople called Takumi who go far beyond this. Devoting 60,000 hours to their craft, a life of repetition and no shortcuts. Most of us will never reach such heights. But what about machines? A.I. is no longer science fiction; it’s in our household appliances, in our phones. By 2050 machines will outperform humans in virtually every field. Will human craft disappear as A.I. reaches beyond our limits? Directed by Clay Jeter of Netflix series Chef’s Table and narrated by Neil MacGregor, historian, former Director of the British Museum. The 60,000 hour version sits within an interactive player, allowing viewers to fast forward thousands of hours of Takumi dedication. A 54 minute edit premiered at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. It’s available to view on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play in 57 markets worldwide.

The main role of the design was to emphasize the passing of time. The minimal design and stripped down user interface put the core experience, the Takumi documentary, at the forefront. Providing the user with powerful and playful control, we designed a custom video player with a state of the art fast forwarding mechanic, showcasing the craft and extremely lengthy process to of becoming ‘Takumi’.

For this huge task, 3-5 min short films of each Takumi were looped in between documentary footage, emphasising the repetition and no shortcut philosophy of Takumis and allowing us to create the first 60,000 hour film. Viewers could hold down the space bar and fast forward through the vast time line, experiencing a visual and audio warping of time as they that increased the longer held down the space bar. The final project was taken up in 57 countries across the globe in 24 languages.

The final project was taken up in 57 countries across the globe in 24 languages.