Move Your Teeth

Winners

2012-01-31T12:37:00.002+09:00

Japan-based design company Nendo, who have appeared on this blog a couple of times, have won the Wallpaper magazine "Designer of the year" award. As far as awards go, this seems pretty much deserved to me. Above, the founder, Canadian-born Oki Sato. NYT report here

The definition of irony

2012-01-30T12:07:00.002+09:00

An exhibition until this weekend in the Kanagawa area is of work by Ben Shahn, who made some fascinating paintings from his own photographs, which the exhibition in part explores. He also made work like the above, which is of the Japanese fishing-boat captain who was exposed to radiation and died after being aboard the boat The Lucky Dragon which inadvertently sailed too close to a nuclear test. (The text he is holding explains that.)

The show was supposed to include Fukushima city as part of its tour to several Japanese cities, but one of the several US museums from which the works come has prohibited its artworks from traveling there – for fear of contamination by radiation. How ironic, as this article in the Mainichi Daily News points out.

Eiko Ishioka

2012-01-27T16:53:00.001+09:00

Few designers have the range and talent of Eiko Ishioka. The great sets for Paul Schrader's Mishima film, the M. Butterfly stage sets, the graphic design of Miles Davis' Tutu album to name but a few – sometimes she outshone the project she was part of (the costumes for Coppola's Dracula for example). She died of cancer last Saturday, the 21st.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

2012-01-25T12:01:00.000+09:00

Have yet to see this, but it's now one of the Oscar-nominated documentaries… The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Japanese magazine bits and pieces

2012-01-23T12:19:00.000+09:00

An on-going collection of pages scanned from old Japanese design, interior design, and fashion magazines (above) can be seen on this tumblr site…

Retro Japanese smut mags (below), and linked to from the above site, can also be found here…

Who's behind either site, I don't know.

via magculture.com

Portraits: 29

2012-01-21T11:47:00.001+09:00

Peter Preston, journalist, The Guardian offices, London, 1991
This was taken in Preston's office when he was editor of The Guardian newspaper (he was editor for 20 years from 1975-1995). I had other close-ups and non-angled shots, but I liked this 45-degree angled one – I don't remember, but I'd guess this was not the one used. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

Manga goes virtual in the US – to 14-year-old's misery

2012-01-19T15:50:00.002+09:00

Interesting take on the loss of a print Shonen Jump in the US. Beyond the other finances of it all, everything is geared to instant supply and consumption. Why people "need" instant supply of entertainment, I don't know. (I like the US TV show Dexter, but in Japan we have to wait for the series release on DVD, which doesn't seem to dim my enjoyment at all. In fact it almost increases it.) I would agree with this writer's "maybe, just maybe, the culture really is losing something valuable as everything goes virtual." Despite, like this writer (Andrew Leonard on Salon.com), being a user and occasional creator of online stuff.

The lightness of trees

2012-01-18T11:45:00.001+09:00

Two interesting pieces of architecture featured on Fastcodesign recently. Tetsuo Kondo brought us the cloudscape in 2010, this year its A Path in the Forest, which is a walk suspended among the trees – a light touch design which relies on the support of the trees (and can take one person per metre). While the Toda house below, by Kimihiko Okada achitects is a standout in the suburbs (though I would worry about its stability in an earthquake – do those diagonal supports give it the strength to resist?) and also is intended to have a light, treehouse feel – and looks a nice living space.

The Louvre in Fukushima

2012-01-15T16:53:00.001+09:00

The Louvre's traveling exhibition (including the three graces painting by Francois Boucher, above) to three towns in Japan, including to Fukushima city some 60 kilometres from the power station destroyed by the quake and tsunami last year, is a welcome move to those of us living in Japan. On the other hand, some in the art world have raised one question in particular about the exhibition: how safe is the art work from contamination by radioactivity?

It's the same question which experts have a somewhat hard time answering clearly, although usually coming up with "safe" but being unclear exactly what "contamination" – or "decontamination" – finally means or involves. Although, as often as not, it's a question for people, here it applies to artworks. What, if anything, would happen to an artwork which actually was contaminated, or whether a low level of contamination would not affect the piece but might mean it was risky to handle, is also unclear. I would fall on the side of little risk and would welcome the exhibition, but I'm not an "expert". (And would I, hand on heart, feel the same if the Mona Lisa was coming?)

Crime seen

2012-01-14T18:50:00.002+09:00

To accompany the New Yorker's excellent profile of journalist and yakuza-specialist (is that a job description?) Jake Adelstein are Haruto Hoshino's Weegee-reminiscent photos of him, viewable on the New Yorker website. There's more on Hoshino here. (You need to subscribe to read the full article online – or read it, as I did, in print.)

Tiny Cities

2012-01-13T11:22:00.001+09:00

These "4D Cityscape time puzzles" from a company in Canada look entertaining. They are puzzle maps of a city with building models that are placeable according to a timeline (the added fourth dimension) – so you can see the city "as it was" or add buildings to see it "as it is" currently. It was apparently a toy of the year nominee for 2011 in Japan. Cities include Tokyo (pictured above with the timeline below), London, New York, Toronto…

20% is good but not THAT good…

2012-01-12T12:54:00.001+09:00

Selling f*cks or an f-ing great sale? Details of the origin of this photo – taken in Osaka by Zarina Yamaguchi – over on Jake's site…

Obit

2012-01-11T12:45:00.003+09:00

At many a design exhibition, people will display their chair design. The chair seems to be one of the most favourite objects for product designers. Yet very few make an impression like the butterfly stool of Sori Yanagi. Yanagi died – age 96 – on Dec. 25 last year. Design Boom have a brief obituary.

Portraits: 28

2012-01-09T20:24:00.001+09:00

The Pooh Sticks, indie band, Cardiff, 1993
The band was founded by vocalist Hue Williams, on left, and Steve Gregory, as producer and songwriter. The line-up, disbanded in 1995, was billed using fictitious female first names – so I'm not sure who else was who in this photo! This was for The Village Voice, and I and the band spent a couple of hours in different locations in Cardiff. As it became dark, I took this shot as the band sat in a Wimpy hamburger restaurant. I like the overall effect, a band member's "looking back" with the video camera, and the photo's obvious – and irrelevant – Edward Hopper reference. Irrelevant – or not? By coincidence, perhaps it plays into what All Music Guide called The Pooh Sticks' free "pilfering from the entirety of pop's past" and "postmodern culturalcriticism, retro-irony".

Dennis Potter, scriptwriter, cinema lobby, New York, 1992
Another Village Voice shot. This shot – the first actually taken for the Voice in New York rather than from London – was both a treat and involved an embarrassing failure. I'd photographed Potter in conversation at a talk he was giving and gone into the Voice's offices to develop the film in their darkroom. It was a Sunday and the art director, Robert Newman, was working in the otherwise closed office. Somehow, I did something wrong in the developing process and the film was blank (to this day, I'm not sure why) and I had to swallow my pride and step out to admit the failure to Robert. He was generous (as always) and was quickly able to get in touch with Potter and arrange for me to grab a quick portrait of him instead at the film-showing he was attending that evening. Potter, too, was generous – and the lightness with which he treated the situation was perhaps apparent in this shot. Recently, I read an article which said Potter – who died in 1995 – was less respected in Britain than abroad, which is one of those odd comments from critics who seem to be stunningly ill-informed: in my youth, I remember almost religiously watching Pennies from Heaven (featuring Bob Hoskins) with my father who admired it and Potter greatly, talking about Blue Remembered Hills at school, and the praise and coverage given to The Singing Detective.

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

C1 & C2

2012-01-02T16:28:00.000+09:00

My design for the J-pop duo Cousin's new CDs – C1 and C2, issued on the same day. Both available here.

Year's end

2011-12-28T13:53:00.002+09:00

It's been a short year here in Japan, because it essentially began on March 11. The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant breakdown changed Japan for the year; changed those affected for ever; and we'll see if it continues to change the country as it perhaps should.

This is a screen-style illustration I made using a few of the few photos I took in Sendai. The text says, "Our house was washed away," which is what one child whispered to us. The tsunami wave in the illustration is meant to be a reminder of the initial TV images of the wave viewed from above. In fact, in the middle tree of the third screen from the left, there is a concrete panel stuck on the bent trunk (you can just see it in silhouette), so the illustrated wave also reflects the height the wave reached here along the open shoreline.

Crowd-sourced infographics

2011-12-26T12:59:00.002+09:00

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has started a website this month to show facts about Japan via submitted infographics – like the one on the aging population, above. Interested designers can submit an illustration on a topic, using expert data, and chosen ones are uploaded. Like any crowd-sourced illustrations, much of the quality is not high, but at least it is an interesting idea from a government, picking up on infographic popularity.

Slowly painted fast food

2011-12-20T22:05:00.002+09:00

Another neat idea from the designers at Nendo to celebrate cup noodle at the (yes, there is one) Cup Noodle Museum. These are urushi (lacquered) cup noodle pots – the lacquer applied to an actual cup noodle package, to create a mix of the disposable and the permanent.

Portraits: 27

2011-12-19T10:53:00.005+09:00

Keith Piper, artist, in front of his work at Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1987
As we are about to see Meryl Streep's performance as Margaret Thatcher in the new film The Iron Lady, this is a small reminder of how plenty of people – like Piper, who back in 1982 had co-founded BLK Art Group to link art with politics affecting black people – saw Thatcher's presence at the time as a negative one. I also took a shot of Piper in front of another of his large paintings – of children in Soweto – thinking that Thatcher filling the framing of this photo might work against it being an image of Piper. But I think his pose and expression belie the domination of Thatcher in the frame. There's an article about Piper's work at the time here, through which I learned only as I write this 25 years later, that one of his paintings – sourced "from other people's photographs" – was from a photograph I took of a woman who had been raped by the police. (She is second from left in the photo at the top of the page.) A strange coincidence across time. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

Photo feature on Tsukiji fish market

2011-12-17T17:54:00.002+09:00

Although it's a popular tourist spot, I hadn't visited Tsukiji fish market before I went to make this CNNGo photo feature – even though I first came to Japan 14 years ago. So, this was a chance to remedy that.

Post nuclear

2011-12-15T21:29:00.000+09:00

Here's a slightly strange one. The artist Kenji Yanobe is known for his post-apocalypse-style, anime-inflected creations of imaginary "atom suits" and machinery, and his, for example, "Standa" – a large sculpted figure which unfolds as it detects radiation to turn its face to a "sun". Taro Okamoto is also known for his anti-nuclear mural which hangs in Shibuya station, his many sculptures, sometimes in public places, across Japan – notably the "Tower of the Sun" in Osaka. Okamoto is now dead, and Yanobe is a contemporary artist who, in a current exhibition inherits part of the mantle of Okamoto with his specially created new "Sun Child" at the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum. The video above comes from that museum and celebrates the work and the history of both artists – including an image of Yanobe wearing one of his creations in the ruins of a school in Chernobyl. But the video passes without a mention of Fukushima. Is it taken as read (as The Japan Times assumes in its review)? Or deemed inappropriate or difficult to mention – even though both artists have works questioning nuclear power or disasters? A case of bad timing? Or good timing for Yanobe's suits which always seemed entirely fictitious before and now don't need an obvious link – a link that may seem tasteless or an abuse of a disaster for publicity? (Does it take time and distance, like that we have from the Chernobyl accident?)

I've enjoyed seeing various shows of Yanobe's work before, so I'll try to see this one.

Hello world

2011-12-14T13:45:00.001+09:00

Hello Kitty continues to take over the world. An arts magazine from Japan (Geijutsu Shincho, September 2011 cover), Elle in Taiwan (December cover) and news that Sanrio (the company behind Hello Kitty) have bought the Mr Men. Gosh.

Portraits: 26

2011-12-12T11:55:00.001+09:00

Euzhan Palcy, film maker, in a club room, London, 1989
Palcy was promoting A Dry White Season, which she had directed, but at the time I'd only seen her first film – the excellent Rue Cases Negres, an independent, small-scale film about a boy potentially escaping the prejudice and poverty of sugar cane work by getting a scholarship to a university in 1930s Martinique. Though I liked that film very much, I only now realise that I haven't seen a subsequent Palcy film – even A Dry White Season (which featured Marlon Brando, who chose to appear in it after being impressed by her direction and social understanding in Rue Cases Negres). Time to get some films out on DVD and make amends. For City Limits magazine

Alicia Partnoy, poet and ex-political prisoner, London, 1988
Alicia Partnoy was imprisoned for two and a half years without charge from 1977, during which time she was also abused and tortured – one of thousands of the "disappeared" after the military coup in Argentina. I can't remember why I met her outside rather than indoors somewhere, but the alley and high wall were intended to hint at that imprisonment, a placing which I was even then vaguely wondering (as I still do now) if it was too simplistic. On the other hand, there was no particular reason to photograph her on any other London street or cafe, and another part of me thinks that the end result is not so bad. She moved to the US, forced out of Argentina, in 1985 and wrote a book, The Little School, about the time of her imprisonment. She teaches at a US university, and writes – see this video of a poetry reading (and with impressive hair now streaked with grey).

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

Magazines, nudity and politics

2011-12-09T12:42:00.001+09:00

Now here's a design question: is a Pakistani woman posing nude on a magazine cover in Pakistan a challenge to the pervading culture or merely a sop to the culture of men wanting to see naked female flesh. It gets more complicated when the actress – Veena Malik – sports an ISI tattoo, hence poking fun at the intelligence services of Pakistan and when she claims she wasn't entirely naked but that the magazine airbrushed out a thong. (Although, while she is suing the magazine for misrepresenting her, a thong is little to remove in terms of defining whether you are "nude" or not in the pose on the cover.)

Pakistan is not always soft – either governmentally or socially – on certain breaches of that pervading culture, so I wish her well and that she remains safe. And I will leave it to others to decide whether this is a Germaine Greer-esque challenge, or a wrong fork in the equal rights road and only a "win" for the continuing success of lads mags. Meanwhile, a satirical magazine in India imagines the ISI chief gracing the same magazine's cover…

Family.Life.

2011-12-08T16:55:00.001+09:00

I mentioned Bruce Osborn's family photos before. He has recently been making a series of portraits of families in the tsunami-hit areas, featured this month in a spread for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine. Extraordinary shots of family groups against a backdrop of the devastation they experienced and still live amongst. Families celebrating life and ackowledging loss, putting a positive portrait-face to the world. Even in the situation of the family in the main shot above – on the steps of their destroyed apartment with the father's destroyed office building behind, from where he was rescued while others they knew were less lucky – there is a sense of family and life. (And hence the title I gave the spread.) There's plans that the work will feature in a newspaper article soon and, next year, a TV documentary.

Olympian challenge

2011-12-07T12:18:00.001+09:00

I went to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan press conference by ex-Olympus CEO Michael Woodford a week back. He has exposed Olympus' shady finances (putting it mildly – the FBI and fraud offices in both Japan and the UK are now investigating). It's big news here in Japan, and Woodford is both articulate and personable in presenting it. For the FCCJ it was a very big event – 342 people present, 21 TV crews, 16 still photographers (and me). Covering it for the FCCJ's in-house magazine, Number 1 Shimbun, I didn't have to get that specific reportage shot needed for newspapers or magazines (of which, though, I did get one or two) so I used the auto-panorama function on my FujiFilm X100 to pan round the room to get the sense of crowd and interest while Woodford was speaking. Click the picture for a bigger version. And read Telegraph correspondent Julian Ryall's article (on this month's Number 1 Shimbun web version) explaining the history of how the news broke here.

Hikikomori

2011-12-05T11:56:00.001+09:00

Hikikomori – the word for those Japanese who live isolated, mostly alone and in their rooms, even if in a family house – entered the Oxford English Dictionary as an import word in 2010. There is a report on the condition/situation in El Pais with David Coll Blanco's accompanying photos – sadly, the word is an export to the world. David's pictures are excellent, sympathetic, strong reportage portraits from a New Start centre for those seeking to leave behind their hikikomori life. Click on the "ampliar" icon to see the photos.

Loss and scale

2011-12-01T16:23:00.001+09:00

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami undesigned a lot of Japan; the natural destruction went well beyond anything man-made. Perhaps it even left behind for, those whose work is design or architecture, a question of what is design and its meaning after such an event – and this is what an exhibition at the architecture gallery Gallery MA tries to assess. It's not as idle a question as it might at first seem – after the loss of life, there was mass destruction to homes and townscapes, and questions of how to plan and rebuild.

The exhibition ("311: Lost Homes") doesn't tackle the question of design's place directly – or pretentiously. Or even ultimately try to answer it. Despite posing the question, the show is more to do with human loss and an attempt to place a response via the work architects. It looks back – using architectural models usually used for showing future plans. In the gallery, there are table-top models of selected damaged areas – scaled representations of approximately 500m-square sections of now-damaged towns and villages – as they were before the tsunami (or in one case, before they were evacuated because of the nuclear crisis). The models are accompanied by a very brief summary of each area's history, plus a before and after the tsunami aerial shot of the same area the model represents. The effect is poignant, even loving, in its recreation, yet without directly addressing questions of what to do next in terms of building, towns and communities, manages to just hint at them. There are no close-up images of destruction, no direct human details, yet the exhibition surprisingly isn't distant, or at least is still affecting in its "distance". It is one interesting response from architects among many responses to the disaster from people of all walks of life.

On the walls alongside the models are a few graphical representations of statistics to do with the destruction – the magnitude of the quake, amount of radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant etc – titled "311 Scale", which can also be seen online here.

Top: a model in the exhibition showing the Arahama area near Sendai, where the tsunami reached 4 kilometres inland. I only made one trip to the damaged area, and the photo below was taken at a position just above the centre of the photo of the model above. I took it including the buildings, although you can tell by the background of the photo, many buildings were just washed away.

Atmospheric

2011-11-30T22:07:00.001+09:00

In my real life, I'm a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society (started by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who just won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books for his second book, The Wave Watcher's Companion).

So as a diversion, for today's here's two sky-related videos. The one above is a visualization of the noise (recorded at 20Hz, hence its name) of a geo-magnetic storm in the upper atmosphere. Really very beautiful (and sort of cloud-related). Termed "A Semiconductor work" and by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, on Vimeo, here.

This collection of 360 San Francisco skies of the year is by Ken Murphy. (He made 365, but 360 fit the rectangle.) It's definitely better experienced full-screen – and I imagine, better still experienced in a gallery or projection – but we can get an idea of it online. Great fun and a lot of work – 3 million stills used for the stop motion. (As an aside: I'm never a fan of new-age music by Moby or anyone else and wish people wouldn't accompany nature videos with it!). Detailed in his blog post here.

Digital, schmigital

2011-11-29T09:33:00.001+09:00

With its "non-designed" look, its well-sustained print circulation, its minimal web presence, its 50-year history and its recent retrospective of covers at London's V&A Museum, it's a further celebration that Private Eye has an editor, Ian Hislop, who can – according to The New Yorker – sum up his approach to the digital era like this:

Across the room, a champagne flute shattered. A man approached Ian Hislop and asked about his strategy for the digital era. “I don’t care about digital,” Hislop said. “I don’t give a fuck.”

via magculture

Election icons

2011-11-28T10:16:00.001+09:00

This is a curious photo-report from the Egyptian elections on The Guardian. To help clarify which candidate is which for the illiterate among the electorate, each candidate has an icon of some familiar object. These range from cameras to the space shuttle, via a vacuum cleaner and an oven. This has perhaps become strange because of the sheer number now in use (250) – and recognising that your candidate is the Canon camera and not the Nikon camera is presumably becoming almost as difficult as recognising the shape of a name you nevertheless can't read. That ability to come up with distinct but easy to recognise items is down to the elections commission, apparently (the items, according to the report in the Guardian, are assigned rather than chosen. This doesn't do much for the reputation of Egypt's attitude to women where a female candidate has the space shuttle, when the Egyptian for "rocket" has the meaning of "hottie", says the report. While the candidate who got the pyramid must be happy.)

A fascinating use of imagery (at an important time). And one getting complicated for those selecting.

Portraits: 25

2011-11-25T20:49:00.001+09:00

Sinead O'Connor, singer, at (my) home, London, 1990
O'Connor rejected the idea of my going to her home and came to mine instead (which was then in what was perceived as non-salubrious Harlesden in north west London) for this shoot for The Village Voice. Among the photos, I liked the religious watch face in the one shot and the expression of Sinead's own face in the other – which was the shot used. The newsprint style of the Voice – a paper I loved, making it a thrill to work for it from London – suited my own black-and-white and grainy approach. Later, another Voice shoot of Queen Latifah and O'Connor together was arranged for which I booked a studio. For some unknown reason, Queen Latifah never arrived at the shoot despite our hearing that she'd left the hotel, so we sat around the studio for a few hours without, understandably but unfortunately, O'Connor being interested in a further, solo, photo shoot.

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

CNNGo guide (to "arty" Japan)

2011-11-21T14:12:00.001+09:00

Last year I started making a list of suggestions for an arts-oriented tourist visiting Japan. The posts followed Guardian readers choosing Tokyo as their favourite foreign-city destination in October 2010. I wrote then that the celebratory article by the informed Pico Iyer was accompanied by the usual stock Tokyo photos. It was those images made me wonder about the "real" attractions of Tokyo – especially for an arts- and design-oriented visitor.

So I started a short, personal list for a "designer's" guide to visiting Tokyo – and the rest of Japan. Now I've summarized 6 of them for the CNNGo website. Duplication seems unnecessary: so I've deleted them from here and you can read my CNNGo guide to arty Japan here.

(In addition, after I started posting the first suggestions on this blog, the earthquake, tsunami and meltdown happened – and tourist numbers plummeted. So – for a contribution to boosting tourism – you might also consider adding Fukushima Prefecture to your list of places to visit, with Ouchijuku.)

World Book Design 2010-2011

2011-11-19T18:05:00.001+09:00

The print company Toppan's show – World Book Design 2010-2011 – at their Museum of Printing is everything that paper maker Takeo's Paper Show 2011 should have been.

Toppan's show plays it simple – while Takeo for some reason mostly displayed their books behind glass, at the Toppan show every book is there to be picked up, opened and explored. The show combines best-design winners from selected countries: Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, China and Japan. Books range from the simple example of cover design, font use or content through to complex printing, binding and design processes.

Stand-outs:
- A Dutch book, Roodkapje was een Toffe Meid, whose cover features a CD – not just tacked on, but mounted on a sliding cutout from the single thickness of the cover cardboard itself, the cover maintaining its strength solely from firm binding paper and a plastic window showing the CD. It doesn't sound much, but is not a straightforward solution to CD mounting, and the very invisibility of its structure is what makes it noticeable.

- A German publication of Nadav Kander's Yangtze River photos. Kander's photos are superb in themselves, and are beautiful in part because of their very subtle tones and shading. The printing to match all those subtleties is excellent.

- A Japanese book of covers for Osamu Tezuka's manga, which is printed using thick, linen-y, folded paper to emphasise the designs' cover origins. (And here is where this show beats Takeo's, which also chose this book but displayed it with cover-only visible behind glass: yet the cover is plain black with a red obi and, while a neat design, is not indicative of the look and texture of the contents. In Toppan's show you could pick it up and handle it: although this was the only book with damaged binding, suggesting there was a slight difficulty in maintaining all that weighty paper – at least for multiple handing!)

- And two or three books from China: one superb one from Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher was a large, boxed collection of hand-bound books, Elegant Folding Fans from Suzhou. Each book is printed on folded, thin paper preventing ink show-through, perhaps, but more importantly reflecting the shape of a fan and also – the exhibition caption reveals – helping generate a breeze as the pages are turned, to reflect its subject. The pages are beautifully laid out, superbly illustrated (and bilingual – English and Chinese), while the fold-out box also contains a separately boxed actual fan. Beautiful – but the equivalent of £875 (¥100,000).

China had a couple of other neat designs and structures (as well, of course, being the binder for the Dutch book, for example). But I can't yet find a link to an image of the above folding fan book, no photography was allowed in the show, of course, and links to cover images don't say much, so, sorry for the lack of illustrations.

The world around us

2011-11-17T11:48:00.001+09:00

There's an exhibition of Naoya Hatakeyama's excellent photos at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. He is famous for his fast-shutter-speed shots of exploding landscapes (of stone mining detonations etc) of which there is one stunning room in the show.

The rest is of differing land/cityscapes – wondrous, beautiful (a frozen waterfall), desolate, damaged or dominating (a man in a snowscape, two tiny people atop a man-made mountain); industrial-scapes and buildings, here often featuring clouds of steam or demolished buildings; and finally a collection from Tohoku – making a natural companion to his damaged land- or city-scapes. With so many images from the news about Tohoku, Hatakeyama's sometimes just fit in unnoticed with the already-seen, but others stand out – a keyboard in the water, a pile of rubble looking like his industrial-made or natural mountains, a submerged house.

Raising the red flag

2011-11-16T11:28:00.001+09:00

My page in this month's issue of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine on the (over?) use of the Japanese flag's red circle in 2011. Here's the text:

ON THE RISE Is 2011 the year that saw the red circle of the Japanese flag (the hinomaru) weary as a design element? Illustrations from France, for example, collected in a book for disaster relief called Magnitude-9, extensively featured the red circle in various (often very imaginative and successful) ways; a website of posters, also for tsunami relief, centered almost wholly around it; and, of course, magazine designers justifiably employed it. Bloomberg Businessweek – almost universally admired for its design team – even found itself in a controversy when the Japanese Consulate General in New York lodged a complaint calling the design “inappropriate.” It seems Businessweek’s superb design of a crack-cum-crying face in the circle linked the destruction too explicitly with the hinomaru and the Japanese people. (One commenter on the web wrote: “You cannot destroy it like this without shattering our heart.” But another Japanese blogger pointed out that the circle alone represents the sun, not necessarily the people.) Other designs employed similar distressing of the circle, so perhaps only Businessweek’s prominence attracted the attention. And possibly the red circle’s ubiquity became part of the decidedly unimpressed reception of Japanese design-meister Kashiwa Sato’s new logo for the government’s “Cool Japan” project – the circle with “speed stripes” off to the left – when it was launched in September. Yet clearly, as a design symbol for Japan, the hinomaru isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.

Portraits: 24

2011-11-11T23:11:00.001+09:00

Michael Nyman, composer and musician, at home, London, 1993
Nyman generously gave me time to photograph him in his house in London. Perhaps most of all I liked a black-and-white shot I got of him on his sofa. But I also liked this one, taken using a small, unfocusable old Russian panoramic camera I had, which was not often suited to portrait shots. (Though I also liked the shot of Laurie Anderson taken on the camera.) It was shot on the top floor of the house – his piano/music room – and the panorama was a good way to encompass the surroundings, him and the music scores cluttering the floor. For The Wire, which used a medium format close-up cross-processed (slide to negative film).

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Two words from Japan: otaku and tsunami

2011-11-08T15:02:00.001+09:00

Just a round up of some aspects of otaku culture and the tsunami in Japan – it seems these reports in the Asahi could be coordinated. First an arts group called Chaos Lounge bemoans the fact that otaku culture (from which the group spring) hasn't responded appropriately to the quake and disaster.

It could be argued that the core otaku culture doesn't respond well to much outside itself – that's partly what defines it as otaku/geek. The name suggests a certain self-centredness. But perhaps the claim of inappropriate response is belied by the mainstream, otaku-connected like Takashi Murakami donating work to an auction to raise money for those who have been hit by the disaster. Or two reports of manga (not necessarily otaku-created themselves of course – but manga in general is part of both otaku and a wider culture) that take as their theme the response to the quake – here the story of a tsunami-hit railway, and here about the human response as a woman considers the effects of giving birth in the post-disaster area (pictured below).

So, I'm not sure how true the original questioning is. Except, of course, the currently big news for those seriously obsessed with one meeting point between popular and otaku culture – the all-girl pop group AKB48 – can visit a new website which allows you to wonder what your baby would look like if you had it with a group and a member. Not a great response to world events in general.

Meanwhile, the top illustration is the cover of a book released in the summer, which features images from a manga of 32 years ago – about the fear of Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Font Aid

2011-11-04T12:17:00.001+09:00

The Font Aid "Made for Japan" font is – finally! – available. All the proceeds from the font (you can buy it from and see the whole font at My Fonts, for example) go to post-quake medical charities (such as Second Hand which is an international Japanese charity now working in the tsunami-hit area). The glyphs were designed and donated for free by designers from 45 countries. It started back in March and members of the Society of Typographic Aficionados has since been assembling all the submissions into the single font with about 450 glyphs. Better late than never – and medical and reconstruction aid is still important 6 months later. My glyph was based on a photo I took of a school sports day cheerleader's shout – a concept of "gambarou" and ouen (support).

Books and paper

2011-11-04T09:36:00.001+09:00

I'm not sure what to make of this year's Takeo paper show. Takeo is a major paper producer in Japan – a country, of course, with a love of the craft of paper. This year's paper show has the theme of books. At the main Takeo shop's display floor, these books are in exhibition, along with iPad and electronic displays of books and papers, plus there's a thick book about the show (with paper samples included) for sale. (There's also an interactive "bookshelf" which I didn't quite follow.) 78 people chose a book each for the show, which are mostly diplayed behind glass, and it's an odd way to display those books which have simple covers. (This is primarily about paper, and the feel is only from those available in currently published form and the exhibition book itself. Only those with dramatic or unusual cover design really work in this behind-glass form.)

Nevertheless, the Takeo shop itself is a work of minimalist art. And there are satellite displays in various bookshops around Tokyo. The craft of paper is a joy, and that joy is celebrated by Takeo. But the exhibition itself – although thought-out in its detail and display – struggles to have impact. Or perhaps its me who missed something.

Portraits: 23

2011-11-02T08:31:00.000+09:00

Leonard Nimoy, actor/director/photographer, in a club room, London, 1989

This was one of the times I was I was most excited about taking someone's portrait, because I – like many – had grown up enthralled by Star Trek. Of course, Star Trek is not a summary of what Nimoy is about (the headline that went opposite this photo in print was "I'm not Spock") but it nevertheless was an excitement for me. Being interviewed was not necessarily an excitement for Nimoy: the previous year (and we'd only just entered 1989) saw him divorced and the death of both his parents, so this photo just perhaps captured something of both his mien during the interview – although the shot below shows that the conversation was absolutely not without humour – and, via a simple play of light from a lamp behind him, just the tiniest hint of being beamed somewhere. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

The vulnerable dark

2011-10-30T14:50:00.002+09:00

Photographer Rob Gilhooly has uploaded some photographs taken in the tsunami-affected area of Tohoku earlier on after the disaster. There's a slideshow (if you have the right Flash installed) on his blog, where he says, "These photos reflect the sheer emptiness of these once vibrant landscapes … I cannot remember the last time I felt so vulnerable." They are very effective companion shots to his reportage of the events. Available for editorial use via Rob's Photoshelter pages.

Chip Kidd on his 1Q84 design

2011-10-26T10:54:00.000+09:00

I find Haruki Murakami too repetitive in theme and too laboured in execution, and after an interest in some earlier books – when I and he were younger – I find I simply can't buy in to his fantasy world, so personally I won't be getting my copy 1Q84. (I feel so lonely!) But the book gets the Chip Kidd treatment (Chip's great work has given added value to many manga at Vertical, apart from his 25+ years at Knopf. See a small selection here.) Above is a Knopf video of Chip explaining the design.

Flowerscapes

2011-10-25T16:12:00.000+09:00

More excellent work showing at the Emon photo gallery. "Opera," a show by Kiiro, features layered images of cosmos flowers, forming a painterly, different approach to photographic landscape. Hints of the classic, and decidedly modern.

Portraits: 22

2011-10-22T18:24:00.002+09:00

Man Bites Dog film-makers Rémy Belvaux, Benoît Poelvoorde, André Bonzel, hotel, London, 1993For this shoot for FHM magazine each of the then-student film-makers holds an aspect of the making of their graphic, serial-killer comedy, Man Bites Dog, with the principle actor Benoît Poelvoorde holding the gun, lead director/producer Rémy Belvaux holding the camera and cinematographer André Bonzel holding the lighter. All three in fact shared writing, producing and directing credits. FHM went with a single medium-format trio shot in the end, though I quite like these grainy, cross-processed (negative to slide film) individual shots. The film was graphically violent and quite controversial at the time. All went on to make other films, but Rémy Belvaux committed suicide in 2006.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Reflecting the taboos

2011-10-20T15:07:00.000+09:00

I'm a sucker for (the occasional) metallic-inked covers. Cyzo (サイゾー) – a pop- and general-culture/exposé/news magazine – has an excellent gloss and matte, rainbow-coloured cover for the theme of "The new Japanese taboo" for its November issue.

(The cover doesn't fully really reflect the inside, just sells it – Cyzo always features a sexy young woman on its cover for its presumably mostly male audience, so hardly a taboo there! There is a girl-group marketing "taboo" among the features inside, but others include yakuza, nuclear power, Imperial family, reporting taboos etc.)

Too much of everything

2011-10-18T12:14:00.000+09:00

The Guardian has a (disposable, of course) piece on whether there are too many infographics. It seems to me that the answer is an obvious yes. But the answer applies to pretty much everything – there is simply too much of everything, and rather than the quality coming through (in this case, of course, merely infographics, of which The Guardian can make some quality images) the best stuff gets drowned out in the mellee.

But I don't need to add another half-formed idea of what's right or wrong. (And "too much of everything" is a general a statement as you can get!) So, meanwhile, The Guardian piece also link to the Newsnight discussion above, which is worth a view. David McCandless, infographic designer, is confronted by Neville Brody, who seems at least to be getting at a greater point about prettifying things, though what a "grassroots" alternative is, he doesn't explain. So, while all is left hanging, at least it's discussed…

Hair B C

2011-10-16T16:36:00.000+09:00

Kind of amusing font made of leg hair. It was made by a student at Tama Arts University (Mayuko) back in August and has already been used by Adidas.

via asiajin

Idle fun raises money…

2011-10-10T12:45:00.001+09:00

…for UNICEF if you purchase a colour. Since my working name is Forbidden Colour I thought it would be entertaining to "own" the two colours (here and here). Just like having a star named after you – the universe doesn't care about the star's name – the world of multi-million colour choices has no inkling that one is "owned" by you! And the irony, of course – I came up with my work name to represent the forbidden colours of Heian-era Japan, a period when the emperor did in fact "own" these colours and others were forbidden to wear them. I just thought I'd free them for my or others' design use. Now I own them.

Art auction

2011-10-06T19:45:00.001+09:00

Beautiful poster/logo by Dutch designer Herman van Bostelen for an art auction for post-earthquake and -tsunami Japan.

This week there's also an auction in Tokyo – with works by 400 artists including Tadanori Yokoo and Yoko Ono. (I can't find much to link to online about it, though it was mentioned on TV. Update: here's a report)

via mestudio

Portraits: 21

2011-10-02T12:08:00.003+09:00

Sara Maitland, author, at home in London, 1994

Maitland is usually described a feminist writer (when shorthand is necessary). Looking back at the negatives for these portraits, I was pleased – with the benefit of hindsight – by these two shots next to each other on the contact sheet. Because for the past 10 years Sara has been writing and living, as she says on her website, "…on my own and pursuing a deep and joyful fascination with silence." Why the empty room should follow the portrait I don't remember: the next shot is another portrait in the same place and Sarah wasn't moving swiftly around. So it was simply a chance pressing of the shutter, leaving her gone and a barely noticeable spiral of smoke from a cigarette. The year before she was divorced from her Anglican vicar husband, the year after she was working with Stanley Kubrick on AI. Here she just happened to disappear into silence.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Designer hero

2011-09-29T14:59:00.001+09:00

I've just finished reading the latest Osamu Tezuka book which has been translated into English – The Book of Human Insects. An odd, noir tale of a woman who achieves success by stealing the work and/or personality of those around her (from actresses to assassins). The anti-heroine is the book's main character, but virtually the only one of the book's cast with a properly good character is a designer. Perhaps the first book I've read with a designer as any kind of "hero". (The book is not necessarily one of Tezuka's best and perhaps less of a social commentary than many of his darker stories, but it's decidedly nihilist combined with being over the top, and is still a good read.)

Tokyo Photo

2011-09-27T15:50:00.001+09:00

I went to Tokyo Photo 2011 last weekend. It's a fair in which a large grouping of photography galleries displayed a selection of their works. And the work covered older work to current, Japan and abroad. Its opening display was a selection of Tohoku-earthquake themed works from a mix of French and Japanese photographers organised by the French Embassy – although we can move swiftly through that the work in the exhibition hall proper. As with any fair it was filled with the good, the bad and the ugly. Among the very good was EMON gallery's work which I've featured twice in this blog. Plenty of history (from early Daido Moriyama to Andy Warhol) was on show, but for me personally, also standing out among the good, were a couple of works which took history and gave it a modern twist.

Meguma Takasaki, above, from Picture Photo Space, created a piece that looks like an ink painting but on close up is made of details of leaves. Hisaji Hara, below, from the Gallery MEM, made mock narratives looking like some revamp of Yasuzo Nojima-era photographs.

Much else was good (much else was not) but these were two from recent years that lingered with me. As I looked around Chris Shaw was giving a talk (in association with London's Tate Modern), about work that also harks back to earlier styles with a contemporary, rushed and dirty feel.

Traveling far?

2011-09-25T19:03:00.001+09:00

When I last mentioned a print magazine launch in Japan (relaunch in fact; it was WIRED) what I thought was going to be a regular issue turned out to be a one-off. I'm not sure why: whether it was intended as just a single promotion for a returned web presence or simply failed.

So let's hope I can welcome another launch – which I think is aiming to be quarterly – for a longer time. It's a travel magazine for women called Bird. Is there a market for a women's travel magazine? Perhaps there are other travel mags which are just a tad macho in appeal, in which case it could be that Bird has perhaps discovered a niche or an audience. Anyway, it's an attractive (semi-gloss coated, textured cover), perfect bound (and 130-page), photo-led publication (with even a tie-in feature with the instant-film Impossible Project) that looks worthy of a place in the market.

Good fonts headline a breadth of subjects (can't say about the depth – not being able to read enough Japanese! – and a headline like "Before the flowers bloom," which introduces various women, seems a little twee). But it has a interesting feel overall. The launch issue is dedicated to a theme of American travel. Backed by Blues Interaction (which did the Japan version of Fader magazine, for example).

(The British slang of "bird" for "girlfriend" or "woman" is not currency in Japan, so any associated, possibly negative, perceptions presumably don't exist – the title works for "flying" and "free" and possibly "feminine.")

Mariachi Samurai

2011-09-23T10:37:00.001+09:00

Previously I thought the only major Mexico-Japan connection was the 400-year-ago shipwreck in Onjuku. But then I was asked to design the Mariachi Samurai CD cover. I'm a bit late in posting this, as the CD was released last week. The band went with my illustration of a sombrero/kabuto (samurai helmet) combined on a gold background for the cover. To also get a mash-up with the font, I used History, a font made with 17 versions, deliberately designed to be overlaid for different effects. I made the MS logo in Japanese style, but backed with a more "Mexican-feel" (a non-specific concept) star. Finally, I took the portraits and live images for inside.

Oyako-no-hi

2011-09-20T11:04:00.003+09:00

Bruce Osborn has been taking oyako (parent and child) photos for 29 years and has organised his day of photographing, oyako-no-hi (parent and child day), for 9 years. The general run of his oyako shots are often adult children with a parent or parents, the oyako-no-hi is more of a festival of family shots. This year (in July) he photographed 109 families on that one day.

It's a high energy shoot (as well as being physically up for it, he recognised that he should have trained his voice as well) and it's a definite celebration of family. Each shot is taken in a necessarily quick turnaround, but his method of getting the pose (often involving the family jumping into a close group pose or some similar action) actually gets some seemingly intimate shots. Sometimes the jump seems to reveal a balance of energies and focus – like the little black-hole of energy the child seems to be below.

Others are simply good fun.

While the occasional back-story can reveal more: the family below had lost all their family photos in the tsunami earlier this year.

It takes some organising (Bruce used a double studio, with the one acting as a holding tank while he worked in the other). For the 9 years of the festival day and 29 years of shooting, they have all been black and white, despite the change to digital. But that, like the shots, is simple and effective. Next year will be the round-numbered 30 and 10 year anniversaries, meaning perhaps a larger celebration of some kind.

A search for form and land…

2011-09-17T12:13:00.005+09:00

I went to see an exhibition last week, titled FORM, by Ryo Ohwada at the EMON Photo Gallery - a small, neat gallery in the backstreets of Hiroo.

Ohwada's photographs are of bonsai against gold background and the finished work is often assembled from various shots taken with different ambient light. This makes both a backward look at tradition (in both form of the work and the bonsai themselves) coupled with a contemporary, updated feel of both. As single shots or single assembled images, diptychs, triptychs and more, they play with references to paintings and traditional screens – or they ride on their own strength.

Beautiful work, in which the main aim is beauty itself, but with an exploration of tradition – and, of course, form. The bonsai themselves are museum pieces, some 200-300 years old, and it's a thought in itself that they have been cared for daily for that time span.

I love it when tradition is both maintained and updated in this way. Ohwada previously won a young photographer's award for his close-ups of the colour of vintage red wines – beautiful shots as well, but these new ones take tradition and its forms a stage further.

Portraits: 20

2011-09-16T10:02:00.002+09:00

Elmore Leonard, author, hotel in London, 1988
He was a good sitter in that he sat comfortably and simply, and even in the confines of a hotel room, some expression of his character – or the character of him in his profession of crime writer – came through. I used a favourite technique of "cornering" at the edge of an image – and his quizzical, off-centre expression seemed to lend itself more than most. There's something of a feel of him "entering the frame" which seemed to go well with a crime writer in this one, so I liked this shot most. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

A problem of promotion?

2011-09-14T12:25:00.000+09:00

The government has unveiled the latest element of "Cool Japan" – the logo above designed by brand- and design-meister Kashiwa Sato. There's no denying Sato's design ability – he is the man behind great work for Uniqlo, SMAP, Kirin and the like. (And so cool himself, my browser won't display his website – I must upgrade something!)

So how does this design fare? I can imagine the neat, zooming Hinomaru circle branding many a "Cool Japan" product or event. Yet, while I don't want to rain on any Japan-promotion's parade, there seem to me to be problems.

One is not exactly of Sato's making, and perhaps is the least problem, and that is the very current association of the Hinomaru circle with the earthquake. Sato says in the press release that he designed the logo with the image in mind of a Japan that is overcoming the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster (the press release doesn't mention the nuclear aspect) and is reborn, so he was clearly associating the logo and the earthquake. But we've just had several months of designs – many prominent world-wide – of the red circle expressing the damage done as well as the hope of a rising sun. Is the "Sputnik" re-birth element in this new design forward-looking enough, or is the recent publicity for Japan just enough to, at a glance, make a "disaster" association the first association?

(Imagine another scenario, which this rebirth design could fit. Imagine the words said THE NEXT TEPCO. Is the logo an expression of a scientific future or a future fireball? Its positivity would be the former before any disaster, but could be the second when post-disaster – and we are in a post-disaster Japan.)

But that's perhaps too simple a criticism, and Japan's flag is the red circle, so it still has to be worked with, and anyway opens up many potential uses. So as I said, that's a lesser problem. Also a small problem is the fact that it looks like the Mastercard logo. Again, that can be overcome in argument by the design simply being another variation on the circle. But it still brings in a business, corporate (rather than "cool") feeling – is this a film, manga and arts logo or an excellent business one?

And that leaves the words. JAPAN NEXT. Hitachi puts "next" in its phrase "Inspire the next" to good use: "next" suggests future; "inspire" is, well, inspirational; the combination suggests the work of people NOW inspiring the next generation, passing down great ideas that are nevertheless coming from right now. But with JAPAN NEXT there is no verb or instruction and next becomes merely something in the future. JAPAN NEXT implies there's something first. Imagine it as a travel slogan: Japan next (but first I'll go to France). It wants to suggest a future – where Japan is going – but it really only suggest a plan or a second-place: Japan next (after it's sorted out its current problems). Even THE NEXT JAPAN would be an improvement.

This is additionally strange, because there is a trend in Japan to use the English "now" as a "borrowed word" within Japanese and transliterated as なう ("nau"). It's especially used for tweets when saying what you're doing or where you are ("izakaya nau", "drinking nau" etc etc). Surely that trend and the simple immediacy of JAPAN NOW would be a straightforward improvement. This isn't a plan, a second stage, this is a priority and is happening at this minute. Japan is recovering, Japan is cool – it's not a plan for the future.

I'm not a fan of negativity or of pretending that I can criticise from my backwater a very talented designer like Sato who does superb, unquestionably first-class (and "cool") branding work. But there just seem to be those three crucial problems with this.

On the plus side, it is simple, visually catchy and recognisable – and maybe that is plenty.

Radiation and risk

2011-09-13T10:49:00.001+09:00

Since the Fukushima plant began spewing radiation, everyone in Tokyo (and, it goes without saying, everyone closer to the plant) has been trying to work out what experts say about radiation doses – more relevant to us in Tokyo are low but continuous radiation doses (via food, since mostly air-borne radiation is too low to matter). On the whole I'm not worried, but one expert doesn't seem to agree necessarily with another – and when it comes to food, nobody seems particularly clear. Because I was attempting to get as accurate as possible assessment of this myself and finding conflicting data from different "experts", I suggested to the editors that a brief article on who is an "expert" on radiation and how can we analyse expert opinion would be good for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine. Gavin Blair wrote the piece in this month's issue and above is my layout and illustration for the print edition. For the simple illustration I took a dice image and added the radiation symbols: the "danger" or "safety" is of course a risk assessment, but also a risk assessment is the accuracy of different experts. Hence the throw of the dice.

I had wondered about believing sub-atomic-level physicist and string theorist Michio Kaku ("we came close to losing northern Japan"); journalist and green campaigner George Monbiot (who converted to being a supporter of nuclear power after Fukushima because of its overall safety); Chernobyl researcher Tim Mousseau – who is nevertheless partly contradicted by Chernobyl researcher and previous colleague Sergey Gaschak (one of whom must be nearer the truth); nuclear industry insider Rod Adams on his reassuring Atomic Insights blog; or Tokyo University medical researcher Professor Kodama who relayed the dangers he saw in a speech to the government here. Gavin Blair made it into proper article.

Also in the issue: Kazuma Obara's secretly taken photographs from inside the damaged Fukushima station.

9/11 magazine covers

2011-09-11T09:09:00.002+09:00

The Society of Publication Designers has a selection of 9/11 magazine covers from the past 10 years, grouped in three collections of years here, here, and here

Perhaps because it doesn't exactly do news covers, at least not literally so, The New Yorker's covers seem to respond to the emotional side well. its oblique approach to the Twin Towers increasing the design impact. Although in the first couple of weeks of response to the attacks ten years ago it was the shock of the news which largely prevailed, such covers as the Village Voice's postcard cover at the time also got at the sense of loss – not of simple real estate (the buildings themselves), or necessarily even of lives (that's a given, which is usually and understandably avoided explicitly on a cover), but in the everyday sense of identity: personal, citywide, countrywide.

Ten years after, I'm not sure exactly what TIME – usually so clever with cover ideas – wanted to achieve with their anniversary cover. In the New York Times (which writes about the various anniversary covers) TIME's managing editor says “I wanted something that was uplifting, that was more optimistic. Something that literally and figuratively moved beyond 9/11.”And he added a good point: “The anniversary is going to be ubiquitous, and that’s why you can stray from the usual images.” Nevertheless, this design seems to me to have gone way over the top, ending up almost cheesy, or perhaps an expression in line with the sudden dominance (even Dominion) of religion in U.S. political jockeying. TIME's dedicated issue may be interesting overall, but the cover seems almost Spielbergian.

In contrast, talking about about its more subtle cover – which comes from a different editorial remit and intent, so I'm not really comparing like with like – The New Yorker's art editor Françoise Mouly says in the same NYT article, “The image is quite somber, but there are lights. We wanted to look back and look forward. This image, I felt, was poised just at that cusp moment where it’s also positing a future.”

The excellent magazine-cover blog NASCAPAS also features a few covers (not grouped together, but posted around the anniversary time) including two versions of The Sunday Times magazine cover, which broaches the subject of the 200 or so who jumped/fell from the towers - either of which are impressive designs.

Ten years on, the Twin Towers dominate, naturally. It's the clear image of the day, and most of the covers go for the iconic – they are designs for the anniversary not necessarily for a review of what has happened following the attacks during the past ten years. So, despite it being a decade of war since the attacks, the Pentagon doesn't feature anywhere, nor are there any montages of iconic or explanatory shots to cover the events since. These are anniversary, cover images: symbols. Content – I hope – is inside, along with analysis.

Main image above, my shot of the WTC using an old, fixed-focus (more non-focused), light-leaking Russian panoramic camera I used to have.

Advertising by association

2011-09-06T11:53:00.003+09:00

The complex relationship between reality and promotion, when advertising gets close to real world-events, is skirted in a recent ad promoting a publishing company.

Takarajimasha – the publisher concerned – printed the ad on Sept 2 in various publications. The ad (above) consists of a photograph of Gen. MacArthur arriving, post-war, at Atsugi airbase, ready to "rebuild" Japan, with catch copy saying: "Let's make a great country, however many times it takes" while the company's name appears small at bottom right. And that's all.

Of course, the deliberate thought-provoking/offensive (take your pick) link is two- or three-fold: was it MacArthur who made the new Japan great; is Japan at an equivalent place, post-the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, as it was post-WWII; should a company promote itself, however clearly/obliquely, above or alongside the rebuilding after a national disaster? Perhaps it includes, do we want to promote a different, "new", even foreign-oriented Japan, in the light of the disaster?

(Apparently, trending on Twitter was critic Machiyama Tomohiro opinion: "I don't think they put much thought into it. They're a company of idiots." While New York Times Tokyo-based reporter Hiroko Tabuchi tweeted, "Think it's an interesting ad, a real snub at Japan's postwar political leadership. Provocative, cynical, in some ways brilliant.")

One thing for sure, I didn't specifically know of this company before this ad (though I'd seen their magazines), so it worked on that level. And the company likes a simple, questioning, "thought-provoking" ads: last year it went with a photo of two dogs and the question "Can a Japanese dog and an American dog talk to each other?"

This one reminds me of Apple's promotion a few years ago – as part of its "Think Different" series which used famous (mostly dead) people to promote Apple via their own unconnected achievements – Apple just wanted to be associated with them. Einstein was an obvious one. Whether, especially posthumously, a person should be promoting your company via an unconnected association is sometimes iffy. The question was brought to the fore by Apple's "honoring" of Rosa Parks (below) – the black woman who refused to sit at the back of the bus in civil-rights era America – just days after she'd died in 2005. (She'd agreed while alive to be part of the campaign and Apple revisited her image immediately on her death.) Apple associated itself with civil rights, free-thinking – and heroism. As for the latter, in reality, of course, Apple is just a business, not heroic.

Has Takarajimasha overstepped a somewhat similar mark here, linking itself to a nation rebuilding and, in this case, using disaster to promote itself as strong? Or is it just some advertorial fun and a legitimate way of promoting yourself alongside a spirited Japan? Or is coupling your company with a questionable link to defeat in war not the bright way to go? Or is the company neatly linking itself with free-thinking (their own "think different"?) by deliberately courting advertising "controversy" and even making, as Tabuchi said, a political point?

Perhaps, on the whole, advertising on safer ground when it steers clear of the real-world, and we can all treat it as the effervescence it, at least usually, mostly is. Though advertisers may think differently.

Covers with character

2011-09-04T10:22:00.000+09:00

Culture magazine Pen had Ultraman UV-coated on a single-colour black background. One thing characters often make for is a cool cover. This looks better in the "flesh" because of the coat etc. Meanwhile, this month art magazine Geijutsu Shincho explores "Cute Japan" via Hello Kitty (with slightly clashing pink and red. Ultraman wins the cool over kawaii race in my humble opinion).

Sorry

2011-09-02T14:44:00.001+09:00

I guess prostrating yourself in an extreme form of apology (dogeza) can be seen as particularly Japanese – as would be making a keitai-strap figure of the same. When combined with the figures' availability from street-side or in-shop toy dispensers, the triple combination means that perhaps you can't get much more "Japanese". There is one strap that was rumoured to resemble the boss of Tepco – or at least it just came out as Tepco found themsleves dealing with the problems of the Fukushima plant – but I've yet to come across one of those. These are merely beach- or surfing-themed apologists from the same company, Zariganiworks. Complete with miserably apologetic faces…

Design debate/spat

2011-08-30T14:51:00.000+09:00

Interesting blog post followed by a perhaps more interesting set of comments on whether certain current magazine design strength has declined due perhaps to commercial pressures. The blog author, Mike Dempsey, suggests, for example, that the BBC's TV listings and feature magazine The Radio Times had a design heyday which has sadly passed into commercial blandness. In the comments, the magazine's art director, Shem Law, defends himself and disagrees as others join the discussion…

Blind Soccer… 2011

2011-08-28T10:05:00.000+09:00

The Blind Soccer (or Football, depending on your nation) season is underway, and I went to see matches in the Kanto League yesterday. Above, a Nogizaka Knights player scores against Buen Cambio. For those unfamiliar with blind football, all players are blind and blindfolded (in case partially sighted) and played, 5-a-side, on a futsal pitch. In the above clip you can hear the "caller" behind the goal giving the striker the sound to aim at. It's a fast moving and thrilling sport to watch.

Shibuya

2011-08-26T18:30:00.000+09:00

Shibuya, world famous via its crossing, an icon of Tokyo and tourist attraction, now has a tourist information centre in front of the station where you can ask for information. That face-to-face information is probably available in English. But in one of those quirks of the Japanese tourist industry, the website – where it is proudly announced that people from over 50 countries have been served at the information desk – is only in Japanese. Why do they not go that extra step and translate the simple site for people checking from abroad before they arrive? Is translation going to happen in the future? When Japan is in need of tourists, a little information for the non-Japanese speaker (almost by definition, everybody who lives outside of Japan) in English would be something of a benefit. Odd.

Hmmm…

2011-08-24T17:33:00.001+09:00

Well, I've lived my life without being aware of Tenpyoan sweets, so I guess Disney can too. This logo works in the style of a Japanese kamon, nevertheless, upside-down it does seem remarkably similar to a certain silhouette…

Portraits: 19

2011-08-21T10:44:00.000+09:00

Kitchens of Distinction, band, at the record label offices, London, 1991.
The band is now defunct, but this was for an album release interview. Political and non-conforming to the music industry's preconceptions, they were a band that was suited to City Limit's coverage. They were perfectly considerate, but I like the look of sheer boredom at doing an interview shot.

Eartha Kitt, singer, London, 1992
The interviewer was a little nervous – Eartha Kitt, she said, had a reputation for being, whatever the word is… "difficult". I didn't know that, so the interviewer's thoughts made me nervous too, and when Kitt entered, we both stood up like schoolchildren as much as out of politeness. Kitt was, of course, fine, only growling "Don't get too close" when I went for my usual close-up style of shooting. I suppose she could have meant I shouldn't physically get too close, but I'm pretty sure it was more to do with close-ups of her face revealing too much of the aging process! In the end, I liked this medium distance, medium format shot anyway, with her cutting an impressive figure. Eartha Kitt died in 2008. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Design for Manga and Anime

2011-08-12T18:04:00.000+09:00

Idea (アイデア）design magazine (left) has a "Design of Manga, Anime and Light Novel" special edition looking at various designers' work. Each manga illustration-styles predominate in the designs, of course, so it's a case of presenting that via graphical style, text styling, fonts, colour…

As always a mixed pop-art bag with some decidedly impactful cover designs among the usual surfeit of teenage-girl themed manga (mostly in a similar realm to the ubiquitous and boring real-world girl-band AKB48, but somtimes the more dicey likes of LO – for Lolita – magazine which at least only gets the two covers rather than the multi-cover spread of last year's special edition.)

Stand-outs featured include (below) Kei Kasai's covers for Hisae Iwaoka's Dousei Mansion manga, rotatable in keeping with their gravity-free space theme; Tadashi Hisamochi's book (The Sky of Longing for Memories) of backgrounds for Makoto Shinkai's anime; Yoko Akuta's cover for a sexy-looking book Utsubora; and the look back at older 20th century manga… and more.

You can buy the magazine from Amazon Japan

The fast, slow

2011-08-11T10:28:00.000+09:00

Interesting shots by Appura Pai, reported over on designtaxi: long exposures of Japan's high speed rail. (Update note: actually, just any rail, not necessarily high speed.) Never sure about using a photographer's work even to promote a link to their work, so an unusable thumbnail here, and follow the link above or to Appura Pai's flickr site for more!

TOHOKU 2011

2011-08-08T15:15:00.001+09:00

Tonight I'll go to the opening of the new exhibition at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan of the work of member Martin Hladik, "TOHOKU 2011". Martin has made several extensive trips to Tohoku after the quake, tsunami and nuclear events. His work leeches some colour from the photos while allowing the occasional standout colour. With photo-manipulation filter additions, he isolates and focuses on elements of the photos. It's a strong effect, which with the time spent in the area and the conversations with his subjects adds an extra impact.

There's the weary tread of two older people rescuing any useful objects from their house; the orphans ritually transferring their mothers' bones after her cremation; tired firefighters standing on rubble waiting for police to remove a body they have discovered; a woman holding a ball of wool – practically the only useful thing she found in the wreckage of her house. But there's "positive" photos as time goes by since the initial events: the opening of fuel "station" (oil drums); a girl playing football; joggers running past a grounded ship.

I designed a brochure for the exhibition. My concern was to balance reality with presentation, to foreground the imagery and its artistic approach while not denying the reality its obvious, equal or more important status overall. I made a cover with distressed text after considering a fine and thinner font. The latter seemed to promote an "art" and a "niceness" which didn't compare with the content, yet the former ran a risk of a kind of horror film over-dramatisation. I played down the "damage" to the font, but preferred to go with that distressed look – there is more horror than calm reflection in the subject. Pictures were as big as possible on each page, but allowed for a caption which could at least place the people in the photo in a slightly more detailed context. And there's a grey background – white looked to "exhibition-y", black too funereal.

A small brochure, but it seemed important to give due respect in some small way via the design to both the images and the people in them.

Martin has set up a fund for two orphans, one of whom appears in a photo he took. A way of donating is online at his photographic site for the work, www.tohoku2011.com

News, in the world

2011-08-07T11:18:00.001+09:00

The Guardian's Tokyo correspondent. Justin McCurry, gives a summary of the phone hacking news from the UK and looks at whether it could happen in Japan in the latest Foreign Correspondents' Club in-house magazine, Number 1 Shimbun. So I went with the red-top design on the cover (the above image is the entire cover, which featured the red top on a black background), text-wise being supported by a serious story which nevertheless lent itself to a tabloid-style headline – Jake Adelstein's article on being attacked by the yakuza.

Beck and fall

2011-08-06T17:52:00.000+09:00

In detail: Beck's original, above, and Noad's twist on it, below…

Nothing is exactly sacrosanct, but some things just don't need redesigning. Coca-Cola just doesn't need a new logo, however much one might see a design challenge. It applies across the creative scale: the Mona Lisa doesn't need repainting, 2001: a space odyssey may be 40 years old but it doesn't need a remake. Occasionally the unexpected happens – in my own view, Gus van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (but in colour and set today) hit some very interesting spots about film-making, and was always intended as a comment or an exercise, not an improvement.

In the design world, Harry Beck's original London Underground map (although adapted for the expansion of lines) does not need a redesign, however much of a valid student-style exercise there might be in doing that. (When I was at school, the art teacher set one task of copying a great, favourite work of art, in an exercise not of improvement but of realisation just how hard it was to achieve the original.)

So designer Mark Noad's effort at redesigning and hence (I assume) "improving" by making more accuarte the links between layout and geography, is, for me, most likely to stay on the drawing board.

But now, according to fastcodesign.com, it has created a small furore over what "design", a "map" or a "diagram" is. Renown designer Erik Spiekerman (who has designed the Berlin subway map) has both pointed out the London "map" is a diagram not a map and to say in a comment (in the above link), "The worst [maps] are those in this [Noad's] example, because it is neither a diagrammatic representation of an invisible system underground, nor a true image of London’s complex topography and its transport connections."

He's right about the Beck map being a diagram, not a map, but perhaps a little too literal: one definition of a map includes "a diagrammatic representation of an area…" and most users would use the London Underground map as a general map (a diagrammatical explanation with direction illustrating how to get from A to B). The accuracy to topography is essential the more worthwhile and useful a map would claim to be, of course, but centuries-old maps based on limited knowledge are still maps, even if inaccurate. And in the hands of users, simple, illustrated tourist maps are still "maps" even without exact topographical accuracy. Semantically, Spiekerman is correct – Beck's work is a diagram showing connections unrelated to exact geography – but practically it doesn't matter (to the user) as the fastcodesign.con poster above, John Pavlus, said.

However, I see Spiekerman as fully correct in his statement above about this new map not being a good example of improving on Beck's original.

Meanwhile, visitors to London might rely only on a subway diagram, but most would have a street map to compare and realise distances and relation. And Londoners also have that other bible of getting around its above-ground streets, the London A-Z map book. I personally can't see Noad's work being included in that as the tube map in the near future…

News, paper

2011-08-06T11:20:00.000+09:00

The Guardian visualises the massive rise and (still relatively minor) dip in number of newspapers in the past 320 years.

Old school, new work

2011-08-02T10:28:00.004+09:00

A good little read

On designer Eva Zeisel at 104 (above linked to the Wall Street Journal online), and her talk at TED from 10 years ago, below.

Via Eiko

Tradition and innovation

2011-08-01T18:22:00.000+09:00

I went to the short-lived exhibition by Issey Miyake (at Design Site 21_21, before his show of work with Irving Penn) about the earthquake in Tohoku. Well, less about the earthquake as such, and more a support for the people and craftsmen and women of the area, because Tohoku is the area where a lot of the companies, dyers, cutters, knitters, experimenters, textile-makers that Miyake works with are based. The area has that tradition of work, and an introduction to the display of his and their work describes "tradition" as "research with perseverance" and involving innovation. A neat definition.

On at the same time, I missed the Tokyo Art Fair (at the International Forum) but you can see a review on Tokyo Art Beat.

I haven't seen…

2011-07-28T16:28:00.000+09:00

…anyone walking around with one of these. But then, perhaps I thought they were having lunch. Food-themed covers for iPhones from Strapya in Japan.

Thanks to Lena in Greece for the tip. Obviously, news of Japanese quirks spread gloabally faster than I get to know them here. Or, more likely, I'm just out of touch.

Bill Viola

2011-07-26T14:46:00.000+09:00

Superb

Photography and a reason

2011-07-25T12:35:00.000+09:00

Having struggled with my "reason" to take photos – and the swampland of photography on the internet making me wonder why I should add to it – I found great photographer Nan Goldin's tips for budding photographers interesting:

"Top tip: Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art."

I see that as a warning to myself

Interesting interview over on The Guardian

Portraits 18

2011-07-22T10:09:00.003+09:00

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, film-maker, on a roof in New York, 1992
Jeunet was in New York promoting his first film as director Delicatessen. On the roof of the promotion company, a playful Jean-Pierre mimicked the listening through air-ducts that played a part in the film. For The Village Voice.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Kenneth Grange

2011-07-19T10:45:00.001+09:00

To tie in with an exhibition at the Design Museum (starting July 20), an article in the Guardian about now-82-year-old, still-working designer Kenneth Grange, whose work has ranged from the Kodak instamatic (on the exhibition poster, above) to the iconic InterCity 125 trains (which I always liked). Iconic and impressive work.

Update, 20 July: more here in The Guardian, including mentions of designs which are part of the fabric of my life, from razors I used (and admired) to food mixers that defined my idea of a kitchen when young

Logo let go

2011-07-16T11:36:00.000+09:00

When is a logo plagiarism – or simply a copy – and when does it just stem from the same idea? Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency got a new logo just a couple of months ago, but it's already withdrawn (removed from the website yesterday) after the discovery of its similarity to the logo for WorldCat (a web-based searchable database of hundreds of libraries worldwide). They are almost the same – with a star being formed by the white space at the centre of 5 swirling (very similarly coloured) lines.

The design seemed much to close for accident – or, with a limited use of stars and swirls (often favoured logo iconography) and some helpfully built-in Illustrator colours, could it have been pure coincidence??

via Japanprobe

Time for the news

2011-07-14T16:00:00.001+09:00

With either very neat timing, or just missing a small crucial addition to the subject (viz. Murdoch's trials), The Economist has a very good special edition on the future of news. It has a couple of takes on the idea that "news" is actually "returning" to the more socially-oriented media from which it originated, and the mould for current mass-media news could be seen as just a "a phase" rather than a truly established method. The special report also looks at the "Foxification" of news – ie introducing, or re-introducing, opinionated news. (Here, in an otherwise interesting piece, it does seem momentarily to get lost between introducing opinion but combined with "fairness". But I'm not sure how "fair" and opinionated piece can be!)

Of course, social media is justifiably central to the coverage of the report. But I do think there is a slight sense of "scrambling" in general in analysis of news to get at what is and isn't relevant about social media to news. The section uses the social media reports around the death of Osama bin Laden. Yet the guy who tweeted the events as they happened did so accidentally (he didn't know what was going on and only his followers would have been aware that anything was happening even if not knowing what) and so the "news" aspect of the tweets was retrospective. And as Obama scheduled a presentation to the nation, twitterers wondered if it was to announce the death/capture of Ghaddafi or bin Laden. Hardly "news", it seems to me, just speculation before the news happened.

Not that I want to deny the impact of social- and new media in news – here in Japan after the tsunami, I got my news about radiation from sources all over the web, being unable to rely on old media, and got updates on others' status, reports and well-being via Facebook. (But many a tweet seemed too insignificant when I read them with a retrospective eye – not actually being an immediate follower of anyone. And the lauded Quakebook, for example – quickly assembled, first-person accounts of the quake from mostly non-professional writers – just isn't a good read however good its cause.)

It's just that I think credit is due social media in the news where it is due – random speculation about what Obama may be going to say in an hour's time surely can't be called news, while behind-the-lines mobile-phone videos and tweeted reports during, say, the Arab spring uprisings most definitely can.

But those are just thoughts on reading a coherent and worthwhile section. (Available online, though without its "special section" feel, of course.)

Semiotic singularity

2011-07-12T11:59:00.000+09:00

Japan likes to dot English phrases in design. Here "Polyphonic microcosm" has a fortunate arrowed translation into Japanese. Now I only need one for English.

Photos and pixels

2011-07-11T09:48:00.001+09:00

Here's a curiosity: 100 pixelated camera illustrations. All free for use as you like as long as you credit their creator, Billy Brown. Thank you, Billy.

via mestudio

Paintwork drying up?

2011-07-08T12:41:00.000+09:00

Nice little piece on the dying art of painting Fuji and other scenery on the walls of sento (public bathhouses) in Japan, by Justin McCurry in The Guardian.

Portraits: 17

2011-07-07T23:04:00.000+09:00

James Ivory, film director, at home, London, 1991.
Half of the Merchant/Ivory film-making team, Ivory had the calm presence you might expect from the director of Room With a View etc. This shot though – in an apartment he shared with Ismail Merchant, his film and life partner who died in 2005 – was probably for an interview in promotion of Mr and Mrs Bridge.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

July issue

2011-07-04T12:14:00.001+09:00

My cover for the July issue of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine. Four prominent Japan-based journalists/writers/pundits look at the future of various media in Japan.

The fourth issue after the quake and tsunami also still has a section on the aftermath – including one member's visit to two mass-funerals in one day. And these photos by Everett Kennedy Brown, taken in the affected areas with a 150-year-old camera and developed in a tent on the spot.

Non-mono

2011-07-03T21:03:00.000+09:00

I haven't seen this in use on the street as yet, but thankfully someone is showing that not all smartphone handsets have to be so… similar. Product designer Naoto Fukasawa's update of this pre-smartphone infobar design (also for iida and mobile phone provider au) includes not only the handset design but the UI. Pity I'm with Softbank and their push of the iPhone – although Softbank's hybrid clamshell-and-touchscreen Aquos looks good too.

Teens and tohoku

2011-06-30T18:32:00.000+09:00

This sounds interesting: Tomo (友 – friend), an anthology of Japan-related teen fiction to raise money for the relief effort in Tohoku

Power play

2011-06-28T09:43:00.000+09:00

I almost passed another Thomas Struth photo by. The first time I saw one of his photos in a gallery, I also almost passed it by. This time, a quick glance at a news report of his photograph online and I thought, "What's special about that photo?" and clicked on. Then went back. Then read the article. As with that photo in a gallery maybe 20 years ago, something made me look again. 20 years ago it was a seemingly simple architectural street shot featuring no people and at first glance with no distinguishing features that kept my attention. But at his best, Struth creates a visual "tension" somehow in the seemingly mundane. And that "tension" is a hallmark of one strand of great art, whether it's music or visual art, say, lyric or photo. By working being undemonstrative, by setting off one aspect (idea, musical phrase, brush stroke etc) against another, by letting the viewer/listener realise there is more and by "suspending" the work above their expectations, the artist creates a "tension" that holds an idea up. Raises it and suspends it, creating the impact by that creative tension.

It's in the smile of Mona Lisa, and the mismatched horizon behind her; in the muted trumpet of Miles Davis when you expect a full note; in a lyric by Bob Dylan when you expect a straightforward pairing of phrases but get the opposite or simply the more difficult. And at times this comes across to the audience as effortless, whereas a talent and skill and hard thought-through expression of the art is behind the apparent simplicity.

While I'm not comparing any of those with each other or with Struth's work, so it is with this newly commissioned photo of Prince Philip and the Queen. The Queen has worked with many modern artists with differing results. So what's special about this one, especially as it seems like a failed snapshot at first glance?

You'd expect the Queen to be also the centre of attention in the photo. But she's slightly overexposed, by the light of the window, while Prince Philip is more in shadow. But Struth has exposed for the shadow, and, though off-centre, it is Philip's face which draws the attention. The Queen is the lighted one, but the man in her shadow is the subject. Yet he will always be "in her shadow", so he's both the focus and the "lesser" sitter – although he's the main subject in this photo taken for his 90th birthday. So, Struth has placed the main subject in a secondary position while keeping him the main subject. Setting up one of the perceived "tensions".

So the centre is not the centre, and also the left-hand third of the photo is the out-of-focus room. It, like the over-exposure, looks almost a mistake – that failed snapshot look. But Struth has placed the couple in situ. The room is something we'll never experience as our front rooms. It's opulent and royal, and almost slightly ridiculous, although Struth doesn't make that statement. The in-focus side gives us the detail, the rest is there to show this continues – it's a real room to these two. Two older people who, on one human level, should be at odds with this expression of opulence and wealth, but who in fact sit almost comfortably within it: this is a royal photo after all. Yet Struth has made them also merely two older people – not sarcastically as, for example, Martin Parr may have done, but just realistically. In the midst of this rich architecture, Philip's jacket – just a tad uncomfortably, just a tad "old man" style – is buttoned awkwardly and high across his stomach. There is the tension of setting and the human, of elite and simply a couple, of the background of history which he leaves for you to make of it what you will.

After the simple play of light (and you can see he has moved that chair to place the Queen and Philip is the differing light just how he wants), with the chair slightly angled (so Philip is also further away, another created "tension" for the focal point) there is a final detail which is neat. The two sit at either side of the sofa, each with an elbow on the sofa's arms, separated by 6 inches of empty space: somewhat formal. And yet there is body language – the Queen's feet subtly point toward Philip in a way which any amateur body language explorer will know is an indication of a person's affection for the other. She needs him, even though she's the one in the light. She's removed from our centre of attention, but she we always be the centre of attention and the person we look at is the one important to her.

There will be those who couldn't care about the monarchy and hence about this photo. But Struth has pulled off what will be a great photo in the history of monarchic portraits, whatever one may think of the monarchy itself. Coupled with a history, the photo will be revealing in future years. He's combined his interest in architecture with a human portrait, a portrait of power but also of power in a relationship, a portrait of the Queen in which her husband is the focus while she is the dominant. A seemingly casual play of "tensions" between aspects and themes, which lift it up. You might walk past it in a gallery you might. But I'd also guess you might look again. And again.

Art of letters

2011-06-24T18:03:00.000+09:00

Type art, with cut letters falling off the walls, from Ryo Shimizu, who explains the installation in part as about Japan's culture of appropriation turning people into cultural amnesiacs… Originally from 2009, but recently highlighted on fastcodesign

Snail mail to raise money

2011-06-22T12:31:00.000+09:00

New stamps released by Japan Post to raise money for the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. Each stamp will cost an extra 20 yen which will go to the relief effort, which with 70 million stamps printed is not a small amount.

The design is perhaps just a tad twee, but is also likely the most acceptable and clear for the broad swathe of the population who would purchase these, so who's complaining.

Japonize your wallpaper

2011-06-20T12:00:00.000+09:00

Instant, adaptable wallpaper using classic Japanese designs here with the Japonizer.

Portraits: 16

2011-06-17T12:41:00.000+09:00

Bob Hoskins, actor/director, members club, London, 1990
This was one of the shortest shoots I did. I arrived at the club and checked my watch to see I was on time. When I was back on the street – having met, found a place on the club stairs to photograph him, packed up and exited back onto the street – little more than 5 minutes had passed. Hoskins was an amiable sitter with a knowledge of cameras and lenses. I took this close-up only inches from his face. "'ang on a minute," he said, "you're distorting my face, right." I said no, just getting a close-up. "Let me see," he said, and took the camera and looked at me through it from the same distance. "Oh, right. That's OK. Good lens," he said and we carried on. For City Limits (and for which I designed my first cover with the selected photo.)

Joe Humble, priest, outside his church, London, 1994
I photographed 70-year-old Joe for Nursing Standard to be featured in an article about the fact that he was HIV positive (contracted during a gay relationship 8 years before). The fact that he was an older man, when HIV interest was concentrated on the "young", and that he was a priest were the centre of the interview and report. I don't know what happened with Joe since – I can find no subsequent information on him since that time. I remember talking about freedom with him and quoting the song "Me and Bobby McGee" to him - "Freedom's just another word/for nothing left to loose" – which he definitely disagreed with.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Cheap

2011-06-14T10:13:00.000+09:00

Low-cost flying usually goes for the cheap and cheerful look. (Although painting aircraft can never be cheap, I guess.) New low-cost airline in Japan, Peach, has gone for… purple, I guess, rather than peach. An introduction to the plane interior and exterior design by a L.A.-based architect Neil Denari is over on Fastcodesign, here. Looks pretty bright and funky – although the article misses that Peach is also an anagram for Cheap.

(What is the urge for cheap flight airlines to be bright? Instant recognition; an idea that you don't have to stay long; a trend already set long ago by McDonald's; a demonstration of energy?)

Magazine launch

2011-06-09T09:43:00.000+09:00

Good to see WIRED Japan – again. It always had superb layout, so I'm looking forward to seeing it from tomorrow, the relaunch date.

Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner...

2011-06-08T19:36:00.000+09:00

...on the iPad. Right or wrong, it's interesting – and interesting criticism n the comments afterthe interview

On Fukushima

2011-06-07T19:38:00.000+09:00

My cover for the latest print issue of the in-house Foreign Correspondents' Club magazine, concentrating on the Fukushima issues.

And some interesting stuff (especially for those under the impression that Japanese aren't critical enough) which is online: an interview with Japan's first astronaut who turned organic farmer in Fukushima only to have to leave, and a translated Newsweek Japan article criticising the foreign media and their handling of the crisis (and our editor's response).