For the first time in all the years I’ve lived in Tokyo, my classes have been cancelled today because of snow! Sure, it doesn’t really look like much outside — remember, I’m from Canada — but I guess it’s to much for most people to cope with. Guess it’s going to be a day of hiding in my futon.
Month: March 2005
Marxy has put up a short clip from Kiiiiiii’s performance earlier this week at Club Que in Shimokitazawa.
This month’s design column is now up at Tokyo Q. Mobiles phones, the KDDI Designing Studio, exhibitions & galleries, and a few magazines.
The Spaminator
Yes, I know, what a bore, another post about comment spam… Spam Karma has been doing a great job of keeping all unwanted spam out, but it seems that it was unfortunately being a bit overzealous, and blocking some legitimate comments also (some friends being blocked even though their messages were quite normal). I’ve decided to try out Kitten’s Spaminator, to see if it opens up the place to everyone, while still keeping out the trash. Fingers crossed!
Katsunori Aoki’s exhibition at the Ginza Graphic Gallery starts today.
Katsunori Aoki continues to produce advertisements with solid, imaginative designs that have been widely noted, such as the Laforet fashion department store’s Grand Bazaar and Kirin’s “Kanpai! Lager” campaigns. For this exhibition, he chose characters as a theme. He does not just create characters as graphics in collaboration with other artists, but has turned the characters into 3D, movies and expanded their world view, an approach that has resulted in the creation of a character design and marketing business. His goal is to create an extra-exciting exhibition that thrills viewers.
As mentioned before, the Aoki show will have some Kami-Robo figures on display. GGG will also be releasing a new book on Aoki’s works.
I Love New Tokyo
A new campaign seen throughout the city. This shot was taken in Ginza.
I’ve been rather hard of late on the music video channels — with good reason — but all is not lost, as I was just reminded of the weekly SpaceShowerTV show PUSH JAPAN TYO. Just now they were playing a Groovisions directed video for a band called Freenote, for the single “Walkmen.” The song itself isn’t particularly great, but it’s not awful, and the video is quite nice. Although you’d figure it to be graphic-heavy because of the Groovisions involvement, on the contrary, it’s very performance-based, with only a few cut scenes using LED lights. I like the warmth of the colors.
I wasn’t paying attention to the credits of what came on after, but the video itself is quite nice, mixing superimposed images in a kinetic fashion.
Oh, now it’s Boom Boom Satellites, with a cool video for the track “Moment I Count.”