Katayama worked in several art and design disciplines from graphic design and sculpture to environmental works and sculpture. His design work features rhythms and patterns and has a resemblance to modern jazz and the studies of Josef Albers.
He designed stamps from around 1955 and in the book Karl Oskar Blase, Briefmarken-Design, Verlag für Philatelistische Literatur, 1981, he was described as one of the most influential stamp designers in Germany.
To Have and To Hold, contains hundreds of bag designs collected during over half a century. The book is a must-buy for anyone interested in ephemera, the history of design or British high street history.
"Rudy is one of the unsung pioneers of American mid-century modernist graphic design. He had a unique and definitive point of view that was really never celebrated. This may have been attributed to his strict adherence to the formal principles of modernism and the International Typographic Style."
