Introducing

The second day of my arrival, I met with Nagayoshi Sumida, who is president of the Sankei Shimbum, aka the Fujisankei Communications Group. I used to watch Dragonball on Fuji TV as a kid.That's a big deal. My grandma was his chinese teacher like 30 yrs ago, that's how this came about. He took me to the Graphic design company that he found for me to intern at in the Chuo-ku district. There I met Katsunori Aoki, which is now another highlight of my young design career. Major awards won: Japan Graphic Designers Association ( JAGDA )New Talent Award, Japan Magazine Advertising Grand Prize, Tokyo Typodirectors Club award, Transportation Advertising Gold Prize, Tokyo Art Directors Club Prize, Tokyo Typodirectors Club Members' Prize. Also judged and lectured at a number of international design events. Aoki is the Founder and Creative Director of Butterfly Stroke Inc. They are a graphic design firm who have worked with clients such as, Nike, Sony, Honda, Coca-Cola, Benneton, Kirin, Suntory, Docomo, Fields Mobile, Yomiuri Giants, as well as graphics and album covers for Japan's R&B queen Utada Hikaru. That is also a big deal. BTF also has their own line of media, and toy products, such as kami-robo and copets.






Afterwards was dinner with my family and the Sumida family on the top floor of Tokyo's press building. I honestly can't comprehend just how many oppurtunities I've been blessed with here in Tokyo. I couldn't have been able to find a better start than interning here under one of the world's most charismatic creative directors in one of the capitals of the world. I can't help but think I'm pointed in the right direction. Thanks God.

Tokyo

It's seems like years since I last had an oppurtunity to update this. Even now, I am submitting this entry via my computer a work. Interestingly this is quite difficult as I really have had no oppurtunities to use english as well. For those of you who don't know, I am living in Tokyo for the next two months, interning at a design firm. More about that later.

My first week in Tokyo might as well been that of a millionaire. Just that first week though, too much luxury is not good for the soul. The extravagance began with the Tokyo's newest addition to its string of 5 star luxury hotels; the Shangri-La Tokyo, located on the top floors of the Trust Tower in the sophisticated Marunouchi District. Here is the view at evening and sunrise.





5 star rooms don't always come with 5 star showers. I've always wanted to try one of the ceiling ones with a window instead of a wall. Obviously, in an effort to get my money's worth, I took advantage of the unlimited free Voss norewegian artisian water. Within the hotel was the most expensive breakfast I've ever had as well as the most expensive club sandwich. Service is what you would expect with every employee bowing upon your every arrival and departure from the building.





Within walking distance was Tokyo main station for access to the JR, subway, and Shinkansen, the Ginza district, and the Imperial Palace.

Imprint

So going back to an earlier post, I mentioned the Imprint culture lab that I attended in New York City. This is actually an LA based event that they held in NYC for the first time. They gather prominent leaders from various subcultures to discuss the creative processes, beginnings, the future obstacles, current events etc. Pretty much how to succeed, or at least how they succeeded. A lot of the people who take part in this are the top dogs of what they do. This year I was fortunate enough to find myself in the presence of such forerunners such as Paula Scher who is partner at Pentagram, google that, Chip Kidd of Knopf Books, google him, Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises, Paul Bunditz, founder of Kidrobot, and of course jeffstaple.

Obviously I wasn't going to miss this for the world. I was however, scheduled to leave NY the day of the event. I thought to myself; not gonna happen. My ticket was non-refundable, but I'm not stupid. Come on, an oppurtunity to meet jeffstaple? Those don't come very often. Matter fact, if not now never. I canceled my flight and the rest is history. Life is about taking risks, something that I'm going to get used to if I plan on breaking into this profession. You never know what might come your way. Anyways the rest is not history.

Imprint was held in the basement of the architecture center. For professionals etc. the cost to attend was something like 400 dollars, for academia and students like myself, 200 dollars. But for students liek myself with a 50% off promotional code from jeffstaple's blog, cheap as hell. The event itself was priceless. Just watching Paula blaze through slides of her work knocks you down. I found Chipp kidd to be quite hilarious and Paul Bunditz even more so. Greatest graphs I have ever seen. Plus he showed us some of the upcoming toys they had planned.





At lunch time while everyone was in line for their AsiaDogs, I found jeffstaple and started talking to him. Its hard to keep cool in a situation like this when you meet your idol in the industry for the first time, cuz it was dope as f**k. I don't know how to describe it really, but think of your dream profession, and think of the guy at the top of it all. THINK.



His discussion with Marc Ecko was saved for last of course. It was just two living legends sitting at the desk up front talking about what they do. Like if you were to sit down with kobe and lebron and have em just talk about basketball. What you get out of that would be so different from what you get from a press conference or a post game comment.



I felt lucky to be here already, but even more so when I got to the reception which was held at the penthouse of the Soho Grand Hotel. Yea, I said Penthouse and Soho Grand Hotel. With complementary drinks and refreshments. The view of New York was just ridiculous, and throw in all these creative people just chilling and kicking back. I was fortunate to meet some great people, Chung, a film producer who flew out from Hong Kong, Unkle Chipp of the Elite Camp, some of the nice folks from Nike Sportswear at 21 mercer, Jerry Hsiao, supposedly the spock of Staple Design, and his wife Amanda from Gap. I wanted to talk to Jerry cause he started out as a Staple intern which is where I hope to see myself in a year or so. I later found out that he's the cousin of one the girls in my high school class. Small world.




Looking back on it, what I sacrificed just to make it to this event was nothing compared to what I took away from it, specifically some email addresses and business cards, haha. I'm still nobody, but God has blessed me with oppurtunities left and right that just opened up on the spot. It's crazy how things might come together in the future. I'll be comin back to Imprint. Check em out here.

Inventory

h(y)r collective is an online magazine that I've been following for quite some time. In order to further expand their brand and presence, they've made the name change to Inventory. Same aesthetic, but overall much stronger visually. The first fall/winter issue is out. Take a look here

New York

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of...

from that blueprint 3 that I bought the first day it dropped. They really represent their king back east. It felt great to be back on the east coast for the first time in too long. New York is as it always was, best city in the world. It's okay, I say that about many cities. I only wish I had more time to do more of the things I wanted to do. This trip was primarily to visit my brothers new school at the Culinary Institute of America. Top in the nation. Hopefully this benefits me just as much.

I also took the oppurtunity to visit a number of potential grad schools; Pratt, SVA, and Parsons. Honestly I have no desire for any more higher edumacation but I got a sense of what I missed out on over the past few years for sure. I did get a bunch of free books though, always welcome.

I mostly stayed at my aunt's house in Jersey City, which isn't in New York, but is 2 stops away from the World Trade Center. Only other place was that one night in beautiful Brooklyn. Holler Angelo. Also got the chance to go up to Columbia to visit my friend Bec accompanied by 2 full racks of dinosaur ribs.

Fortunately, I was also lucky to be in town the day Reed Space was clearing out, so I went down for a field day. Couldn't leave the city without stopping by once. The highlight of this trip was definitely my last day there where I attended the Imprint Culture Lab. More on that later.

And in case you haven't heard, I'm moving here next year.

Live

m-kyu.com is finally live. It may not be much but this is perhaps my greatest accomplishment yet. Whatever credit I do get for this all goes back to God. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project. We are still in the making, but we can only get better.

There are a couple, or should I say a significant amount of glitches and bugs here and there, such as the site not working properly in any browser except firefox, so use firefox only. I don't have much work to show off so most of the designs are only lame placeholder graphics for now, and that's one of the areas that I hope to improve on sooner. Also you might notice that the blog links back to this page, and that was out of laziness and insufficient programming knowledge but I'll take what I can get. This probably makes it easier for you too.

Well once again, thank you for your support and do try to enjoy yourselves.

www.m-kyu.com

Sorry for the hiatus, the new site is on its way. I've jsut spent the past two days reconstructing my blog and uploading soem photo-essays. For the time being, I would like to share this with you.

STEM is an acronym you can see and hear all around the world as the intellectual ad campaign for “Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.” Indeed STEM is an important factor in achieving innovations today, but it’s only half of the puzzle — there needs to be a humanizing force to any invention for it to become relevant and important. What’s missing is the raison d’etre of a STEM outcome. That could only come from an IDEA-based approach — “Intuition, Design, Emotion, Art.” In this new century, whole-innovation will emerge naturally from the marriage of STEM together with IDEA.

-JM (John Maeda)