The fine folks at QOOB have commissioned 10 folks to create original short films on the topics of speed and freedom promoting Alfa Romeo's new Mi.To car, kicking off a serious promotion spree that involves a film-making contest. So far, films by Trey Hock and myself have been released on the QOOB site, with more to hit soon...

The definitive guide to visual art in New York and baby sister to insane D.I.Y. mega-project Tokyo Art Beat has launched!

View Hints for Better Living, a short animated film by CalArts student Mike Afsa. Mike is graduating this year, likes to build scale models and has some more work here.

Tonight: A celebration of ten years of LOST, L.A.'s primero graffiti magazine, celebrating the anniversary and the release of the new LOST book. 

The book contains highlights of the past decade editor/designer EyeOne has spent documenting LA writing. Includes imagery by Atlas (if you haven't caught the documentary on his work, watch it now!), Pale, Cab, Haeler, and more. Screenprinted board covers, numbered limited edition of 2000.

Even if you are not a graffiti fan per se, the LOSt book is a musthave for folks interested in Angeleno culture. More about LOST here. 

LOST is a picture-perfect example of designer as author. 

Well, the first print run of Parallel Strokes is almost gone. To help move the last 200 copies, I printed up some fancy 2 color gradated canvas tote bags. Buy 2 books and get a tote free. Be nice and a poster'll get thrown in there, too.  Bags printed by Sweatshop Union, Osaka's raddest screenprinter. Well, Japan's raddest screenprinter, to be honest.

Thursday, May 1 the CalArts graphic design T-Shirt Show. T-shirts designed by design students, faculty, and alumni will be sold to raise money for the CalArts AIGA student group, for workshops, shows, and other events for the students.

Where: CalArts, Tatum coffee shop
When: May 1st, 7:30pm - 11pm

The shirts are always super-rad at this event. Go early to score new designs from famous alumni!

CalArts' graduating graphic design MFA class  is selling sets of the visiting artist posters on ebay. There are a few sets of all 24 posters and several sets of 6. The auctions will be going up throughout the week, so check back often.

They are selling them to raise money for a class trip and for the AIGA student group.

Own a piece of history. 

My book, Parallel Strokes, is available now via the book website.

Click to read more ...

Polish Illustrator, Jan Kallwejt recently updated his site with a few new things.

Simply stated, George Lois is a living legend. He has been involved in many iconic campaigns throughout his career (think "I Want My MTV"). But I believe his contributions to magazine design in the 60s are his biggest legacy. This Friday, The MoMA will exhibit all ninety-two of the covers he art directed for Esquire in between 1962 to 1972. It should be interesting to see all of them as a collection, in one space. Individually most of them are fairly iconic, but I think altogether will really represent that turbulent decade pretty well.  

 

One of my favorite labels these days is Creation Centre, an experimental electronic label run by Trevor Sias of Music Related. About the label in his own words:

 "Creation Centre was created as a platform to get music to people faster than traditional record pressing and distribution. Creation Centre believes that artists' creativity can be held back by slow release schedules, distribution delays and other hassles. Plus, Creation Centre is an exploration of a new distribution idea, already in use by software manufacturers. All releases on creation centre are free. Though if you like, you can give the artist a donation, as much or as little as you choose. If anything at all. Creation Centre keeps none of the money. All of the donation goes completely to the artist. Please tell your friends, post links, and enjoy Creation Centre."

There is some really amazing music available. In particular, the Marxy EP, Mesomeso EP, and Sias' alter-ego Pandatone's EP. All are worth checking out. 

Sias moonlights as a motion graphics designer and animator. To he and those who create content outside of the workplace, I salute you!

Rob just massively updated Supermundane.

Canadian-based Something Secret just published their latest collaborative zine, Totally Rad. The 76-page rag was curated by Greg Durrell and Errol Richardson and is limited to only 200 copies!

I had the extreme pleasure the other night of visiting Robundo with Chris Palmieri and Eiko Nagase of AQ along with Christian Schwartz the night before last.

Robundo is a hybrid Japanese digital type foundry, type reseller, publisher, and manufacturer of really exquisite small tabletop letterpresses in the vein of old hobby presses. Riso's Print Gocco home screen printing kit is rad, but Robundo's Adana 21J is the next level tool for printing type properly at home.

Katashio Jiro, the owner of the company, is a really amazing fellow who is a treasure trove of Japanese and Western typographic knowledge. He brought out Japan's single oldest type specimen for us to check out (shown below) - a national treasure which he pulled out just for for us!

 

 

Thanks very much to Katashio-san for inviting us to come visit Robundo and for hosting Christian's great talk on he and Paul Barnes' design of the Guardian family of typefaces. The lecture was great, and meeting so many distinguished Japanese typographers was a really huge treat!!

I usually don't go in for design contests, but the guys at Underware have a pretty rad one going on. They designed a custom incised version of Fakir for the design public to use to try their hand at designing a 7" record cover for the band Orange Sunshine, a proto-metal band (a la Witchcraft/Blue Cheer/Sleep).

Winner gets 2000 Euros wirth of typefaces. With Underware, that is nothign to sleep on! Even if you don't win, you still get a copy of the record. Win-win situation. Get on it! 

Through 20 interviews with 29 key figures in the Tokyo art world and 6 essays by art specialists, Art Space Tokyo fleshes out a thorough exploration of the Tokyo art world and the issues that revolve around these spaces.

The guide is lavishly ornamented with over 50 beautiful pen and ink illustrations by Nobumasa Takahashi, bringing readers intimately close to the voices and spaces within.

Topics include:

- Japan's position within the rise of the Asian art scene
- Takashi Murakami and the relationship between contemporary art and manga/anime
changes in the Ginza area's position in the Tokyo art world
- an account of connecting with the Tokyo art world as a foreign curator
- converting subway luggage lockers into galleries
- 100 artists renovating a 160 year old warehouse
- contemporary Japanese architecture and urban regeneration in Tokyo
- the current state of Japanese art publishing and art criticism
- international art fairs in Tokyo
- the collecting of artwork and the history of Japanese auction houses
- art and performance in Tokyo's public spaces
- graffiti in Tokyo

This month over at Néojaponisme: a micro/macro look at Harajuku's place in the fashion landscape globally and locally; two analyses of what it really means to be an otaku; and Tokyo's first contemporary art fair. All this and our editor-in-chief is also having a kid!

On April 8th (Tuesday), Tokyo super-designer Chris Palmieri will be hosting the next TAB Talks, featuring a presentation and Q&A with type designer Christian Schwartz. Christian has created custom typefaces for publications and companies like Esquire, Wallpaper*, The New York Times, Bosch and Deutsche Bahn. His typefaces for the Guardian were an integral part of the newspaper’s acclaimed redesign in 2005.

The talk will be held in English with Japanese translation, at Gotanda Sonic in Gotanda. Hope to see you there!

It's been a vaguely exciting month over at Néojaponisme. We've debuted the first English review of Kawakami Mieko's 138th Akutagawa Prize-winning text Chichi to Ran (『乳と卵』, “Breasts and Eggs”), a questionable graphic novella I did years ago in Japanese, a retro review of an even more questionable Japanese submarine action thriller, talked about the northern islands ceded to Russia by Japan following World War II, dropped bootleg Cornelius radio broadcasts galore, some crappy type design, and an enquiry into Japan's attempt to reform its visual language.

There is much, much in store in the next year: limited edition clothing with a certain clothing giant and more...

If you are in LA and are vaguely interested in things Nihonesque, make sure to check out Néojaponisme Editor-in-chief W.  David Marx speaking at J-Wave at UCLA TOMORROW. A more crucial, engaging, and enlightening presentation on global fashion is going to be difficult to find.

Above: the non-LP b-side image that didn't accompany the Murakami review.

World premiere on VLU:

My new book, Parallel Strokes, is available now via the book website. It isn't officially being released for a  week, but I figured VLU readers should have the first pick.  

About Parallel Strokes:

Parallel Strokes is a collection of interviews with twenty-plus contemporary typeface designers, graffiti writers, and lettering artists around the world. The book is introduced with a comprehensive essay charting the history of graffiti, its relation to type design, and how the two practices relate in the wider context of lettering.

Interviews within include conversations with pan-European type design collecitve Underware, Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi, American graffiti writer and fine artist Barry McGee/Twist, German graffiti writers Daim and Seak, American lettering artist, graphic designer and design eductor Ed Fella, among others. Parallel Strokes is an enquiry into the history, context, and development of lettering today, both culturally approved and illicit.

Full list of interviewees:

Akira Kobayashi
Underware
Ed Fella
Delta
Jerry Inscoe/Joker
Jens Gehlhaar
Daim
Seak
Jonas Williamsson
Handselecta
Tauba Auerbach
Lady Pink
She One
Eklips AWR/MSK
Eskae
Renos
Mike Giant
Chaz Bojorquez
Barry McGee/Twist

 

The result of a six years of research in the combined arts of lettering, graffiti, and typeface design, Parallel Strokes is a collection of interviews some of the best letterform creators in the world today.

Chaz Bojorquez talks about the origins of barrio graffiti in Los Angeles and the evolution of the craft. Fellow Angeleno, vernacular graphic designer Ed Fella, speaks about his history in lettering and how he earned the title “The King of Zing” in Detroit design and illustration circles. Famed Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi discusses Roman and Japanese letterforms while showcasing a lifetime of type design work. European graffiti writers Daim, Seak, and Delta share their thoughts on dimensional graffiti lettering while American graffiti writer Mike Giant talks about vernacular lettering, typeface design, and the evolution of graffiti handstyles.

 
Parallel Strokes is richly illustrated throughout, featuring copious previously unpublished work by the interviewed artists, as well as supplementary illustrations and photographs detailing contemporary and historical trends in graffiti and type design.

The first 100 orders come with a two color 17" × 20" Parallel Strokes poster printed using recycled paper and soy inks at Portland, Oregon's Pinball Publishing.

 
Parallel Strokes is 244 pages thick and available for $25 with free shipping worldwide.