Category: Canadian Style

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Canadian Style Events Photography TB.Movel

Marc Xavier LeBlanc

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The other main participant of Canadian Style is photographer/DJ Marc Xavier LeBlanc.

Marc Xavier LeBlanc is a photographer, artist, graphic designer, music promoter, musician, DJ and radio show host. He’s been nominated for the third year in a row as “photographer of the year” at the East Coast Music Awards, and has won numourous competitions and prizes with his photography on the internet. With a meticulous spirit, he seeks simplicity in all that surrounds him. His medium of choice is photography, though he experiments with other forms and methods such as sculpture, video, graphic design and mix media. He draws much of his inspiration from music, travel, and anything else that soothes his ear, pleases his touch, or happens in front of his camera lens.

Marc’s pieces on show include: 6 large prints from his “Lomography Series,” another series of smaller lomo prints called “(((echo lomo echo))) [the making of],” and an installation of light switches that goes by the name of “The Minimalism Series.” Also, he compiled the 8 mixes of Canadian artists that are being played during the event, and a Mac is setup to project a slideshow of some of the cover ideas, and general “Canadiana,” he conceived for the project.

Also part of the photography aspect of the show are 4 prints (on silver paper) of Heather Eve Sproat’s “Eastern Sea Studies.”

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Canadian Style Design

Sonia Chow

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One of the main participants of Canadian Style is Tokyo-based Canadian designer Sonia Chow.

Sonia Chow is a multi-disciplinary designer based in Tokyo. Her achievements include 19 professional awards for graphic design and furniture, and a poster in the collection at the National Gallery of Canada. Her work has been shown in numerous publications, including ELLE Deco Japan and I.D. Magazine’s (USA) 50th Annual Design Review. She has a Bachelor of Design from NSCAD University (Canada). To see more of her work, pick up the March 2006 AXIS magazine and look for “Creators’ Works.”

Included in the show: the “UNILIGHT” (pictured above) floor lamp, the “TWO BITS” block print, and the “KAMO KEN” sculpture, as well as an interactive installation called “Red + White/Read + Write,” where you are invited to add your white chalk markings on a section of the cafe’s red walls (specially painted for the event).

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Canadian Style Design Events Photography TB.Grafico

Canadian Style Flickr Photoset

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I’ve put up a Flickr photoset of 35 pictures taken earlier today of the Canadian Style event. Still missing are pictures of Marc Xavier LeBlanc’s “The Minimalism Series” and Sonia Chow’s “Red + White/Read + Write” interactive installation (I’ll add those tomorrow).

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Canadian Style Events TB.Grafico

Canadian Style Opening Day

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Canadian Style is officially on at Cafe Pause! I just have time to post one quick pic, but I’ll be updating tonight with plenty more, including lots of info on the various installations. For readers who are a bit tired of my Canadian Style promotion, skip reading tonight and come back tomorrow.

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Canadian Style Design Events

Canadian Style Signage

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For Canadian Style, I’ve also created plenty of signage. Above are the profiles for the two featured artists (I’ll post the text in another post): designer Sonia Chow and photographer Marc Xavier LeBlanc (who also created all the Canadian Style music mixes — more on that later). Marc’s card is actually at the same scale as the others, but a bit longer. As with the menu, fonts for English text are in Helvetica Neue 75 Bold, with Japanese text in Osaka.

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Another component of the event is an interactive installation, “Red + White/Read + Write,” that was conceived by Sonia. More on that in a separate post. What you see here is the instruction card that will be put on the wall.

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As you all know, we have some Canadian Style t-shirts for sale (which you can of course purchase online), and so a small card for that.

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Finally, anyone who has been to Cafe Pause has probably noticed that they usually keep one or two 4-seat tables reserved for larger groups, and so I made a sign for that also.

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Canadian Style Design Events Food

Canadian Style Menu

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As promised, here’s a look at the Canadian Style menu I designed. As you can see, the food selection is maple-heavy, and quite tasty I might add. My faves? The meat pie brought me back home, and tastes pretty much like the kind my mom made. My favorite dessert had got to be the maple pudding — it’s really sweet (more than I’m accustomed to, I don’t eat a lot of sweets), but deliciously so. For the beer, I tend to go for Moosehead when I’m in Canada, but here in Japan we could only get Labbat Blue, so that pretty much settled it. English text is all done in Helvetica Neue 75 Bold, with Japanese text in Osaka.

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Canadian Style Events

Canadian Style PDF Flyer

I put a PDF version of the event flyer online, which you can download here (or from the link in the sidebar). Feel free to pass it along to anyone you think might be interested in the event. It also includes a map to the cafe.

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Canadian Style Events Stores

More Canadian Style Merchandise

It’s no big secret that I’m a big fan of event merchandise, and you gotta figure that I’d do something for Canadian Style on top of the t-shirts. I’ve set up some stuff at CafePress, mostly a few things that I’ll probably order myself, but I figured that I’d make it public in case anybody else would care to order anything. I was rather happy with the Mamma Gun merchandise I ordered from Jesper’s CafePress store (especially the bags, the journal, and the mug).

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Canadian Style Fashion

Fit for a Tee

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Haruka, one of the staff at Cafe Pause, sporting a Canadian Style tee at our shinnenkai last night. You know you want one!

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Canadian Style Design

Canadian Style DM

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Here’s a look at the front and back of the DM (what they call flyers/postcards here) I designed for Canadian Style. It’s been sent to the printers, so should be ready soon. The map is courtesy of Jesper Larsson, and huge thanks go out to Shawn Doyle, a Canadian photographer, for letting me use his great picture.

Update: You can download a PDF version here.