Sadamitsu Neil Fujita is known primarily as a graphic designer. In 1939 he moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Chouinard Art Institute. During World War II he served in the infantry in Europe and worked with army intelligence in Japan, where he was introduced to traditional Japanese art, which would later influence his work. Returning to Chouinard to study graphic design, Fujita was graduated in 1949 and joined the staff of the Philadelphia advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son. In the early 1950s he became director of design and packaging for Columbia Records. He settled in New York in 1954. In 1958 he helped establish the design firm of Ruder, Finn, and Fujita, Inc., and later formed his own company, Fujita Design, Inc.
Fujita has created designs and logos for many large corporations, including General Foods Corporation, Random House, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, and for government agencies. His graphics have also been used in magazines, books, and billboards.
He has taught design at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and in New York at the New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Design. He was an early member of the executive committee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Since early in his career as a graphic designer Fujita has also shown his noncommercial art in group exhibitions held in California, New York, and Philadelphia. Solo exhibitions of his work were organized by the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1953 and the Wellon Gallery, New York, in 1956. His association with the California Water Color Society was brief, from his last years at Chouinard to 1951.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Caseins and Drawings by Sadamitsu Neil Fujita," Art Alliance Bulletin (Philadelphia) 31 (April 1953): 7 § S. Neil Fujita, Aim for a Job in Graphic Design/Art (New York: Richards Rosen Press, 1968), with biographical note § "Neil Fujita," Idea 18 (May 1970): 42-43 § Moure 1975, pp. 14, 43, with bibliography § "Fujita Design, Inc.: They Know What They Are Doing and Why," Idea 23 (May 1975): 10-21.
