‘My Punctuation Marks’ Exhibition
Finally, just the two exhibitions this weekend, I went to the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Shibuya, for a quirky exhibition, ‘My Punctuation Marks‘. 170 contemporary Japanese illustrators who interpreted liquor, tobacco, coffee and tea for specially created works as ‘their everyday punctuation marks, meaning that they give you rhythm just like punctuation marks do in your sentences’; as I said, quirky. There were actually some really interesting visuals on display and of course the not so good illustrations that you seem to always get at these type of things. One illustration was of Tiger Woods with a cigarette in his mouth and a variety of collage images stood out for me. A nicely set up exhibition, with all works hugging the walls to a create a spiraling walkway of rich visuals.
ADFEST 2009 Exhibition
I was back at the Advertising Museum Tokyo (ADMT) on Saturday to take a look at the exhibition of ADFEST 2009. Formally known as the Asia-Pacific Advertising Festival, it is the largest and most prestigious festival held in the Asia Pacific region. This year was the festival’s 12th anniversary and back in March, it was held for three days in Thailand. The theme for 2009 was ‘Made in Asia‘, and the celebration of Asian creativity. The resulting exhibition at ADMT was work awarded silver and above medals including, TV, print and online campaigns.
There was some great print adverts on display from the likes of Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and many more and my out right favourite being BBDO/Proximity Malaysia’s outstanding prints for Jeep. So so good that I needed to show all three here. A vast array of television adverts that I took some time to sit down and watch finished off the small, but high quality exhibition. I am liking ADMT for its exhibitions as they run for short periods of time, are very interesting exhibitions and the next one is set up straight away after the last one.
CLASKA Flea Market
After pulling a 21 hour shift and helping out a bit on a massive presentation we had at W+K, it was a day of sleep last Friday. Come evening though, I headed on down to CLASKA, a hotel in west Tokyo that also hosts exhibitions, events and has a creative background. It’s the place from which I got myself a very nice creative guidebook, ‘Tokyo By Tokyo‘. W+K and other Tokyo based design companies and agencies each had their own store and were selling either their creations or bits and pieces donated from the staff. There were some very nice prints, Medicom toys and other bits and pieces on show, but I decided to hang on to my money and make use of the free drinks. It was packed from the start and you can see the lovely W+K ladies in the picture above. I even met another intern from Nottingham who was working at an architecture practice here in Tokyo.
Wieden+Kennedy 1 Month Review
This evening marks the end of my first month in Tokyo and with Wieden+Kennedy and as you already know the drill, yes it has flown by even quicker than everything else that has happened over the past year. But what a month June has been for me; I’ve settled down in Tokyo and I’m soaking everything up as it’s an amazing city and a complete culture change for me. In terms of W+K, I’ve felt like part of the team from day one and I’m learning lots working alongside Eric. It’s an amazing company to be part of, so I am relishing every moment I have here.
As per my previous post about W+K, the book I was working on is coming along nicely and is just about in it’s final stages and just like I did at Pentagram, by working on a book, it’s a great project to work on by keeping refining and carrying on with designing for a professional context. The web work and mobile phone designs are also nearing the end and I’ve just started on some t-shirt designs and I can’t wait for the new challenges that lie ahead for me in July.
W+K regularly have speakers in and there’s also lots that they are involved with inside and outside the studio walls. Eric presented to some other students from Asia so I sat in on that a few weeks back and it was great to hear about his story and just made me buzz even more off W+K. You can see the presentation on W+K’s blog here. Team ANSWR also popped to the studio a few weeks back to present some work to us and to let us know what they are up to. It was great to see another company based in Tokyo and what they are up to, and it’s amazing just how far ahead their thinking along with W+K’s is ahead of everyone elses. Click here to read about ANSWR’s visit. I managed to get some nice freebies and a show reel from ANSWR. Then last Tuesday, me and Andrea popped by to one of W+K LAB’s video shoots about an hour away from Roppongi and it was interesting to see all the behind the scenes stuff. The LAB guys working on the video and all the design work to go along with it, have just a few weeks to get it all finalized so I can’t wait to see what the final outcome is. We convienently arrived at the time where the dancing girls scene was happening, and specifically the champagne spraying scene. There was only 3 of 4 ’sprayers’ available so in hard times, I had to stand up for the cause.
Then, last Friday, and this will definitely be one of the highlights of my year out. W+K invited John Maeda to breakfast (he cooked breakfast before for our director, John Jay, so obviously we had to repay the favour when we heard he was speaking at a sold out lecture in Tokyo). If you don’t already know John Maeda, he is the current President of the Rhode Island School of Design, graphic designer, author and all around good guy and legend, being voted one of the most 21 important people of the 21st century. He was only in the studio for about an hour, but with a full spread of breakfast laid out by team ‘Wieden+Dining‘, it was a fantastic morning. He had some great stories to tell about being president and was a very down to earth guy. I did comment on one thing, but I got a bit star struck and not too sure whether he knew what I was talking about, but a fascinating hour. The team over in Portland were also watching via video link including John Jay. Check out the breakfast with John Maeda here. Finally, yesterday I got to take a look at W+K’s global book, which isn’t for a sale so a rare opportunity to check it out. And what a book it was, telling the W+K story from day one right up until the current day, including information about all the worldwide offices and teams, brilliant stuff! It can be seen on the W+K global blog here.
I’ve got lots more planned whilst in Tokyo so watch this space.
Ghibli Museum
If you think about films like ‘Spirited Away‘ and where they have come from, well Studio Ghibli is the answer. In an area called Mitaka, again in north west Tokyo just before I visited Nakano, is the Ghibli Museum and what can only be described as ‘magical‘. With obtaining tickets like trying to get into the Kremlin, the Ghibli Museum is the public’s chance to get to see what Studio Ghibli do and how they work creating such epic animations like Spirited Away, Prince Mononoke and Yadosagashi (the second animation in the video) and one which has now become my favourite. It can be seen here.
The museum itself felt like stepping into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory but for Ghibli, with three floors and sky walkways and an exciting atmosphere so apparent in everyone’s faces. On the first floor there was a wonderful series of studio rooms, with original drawings, photograph folios, ink colours, old film strips, boxes of used pencils, celluloid drawings, and quirky items for the people to see. This was followed by a trip right to the top of the museum to visit the Ghibli guardian robot which was the best photograph opportunity as unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photos inside, I did manage to get a few sneaky snaps however.
I headed upstairs to the ‘Ponyo on the Cliff‘ area of the museum where there was lots of interactive flip books, film clips being shown, models, and probably the best bit of it, a glass case, well I say case, I mean more of a cargo hold’s worth of all the drawings and storyboards stacked on top of each other that made the animation. The space was probably about 12′ x 5′ x 4′ high! I then took a look at the Wallace & Gromit section. I’m not sure whether Ghibli had involvement with the hit animation, or whether it was taking a look at the future of animation, but again there was some great things on display.
I then went onto to take a look at the museum shop and separate book shop, which, as you can imagine was packed with people lapping up Ghibli memoribilia. I bought a Yadosagashi short book. There is a great cat bus play area for kids which I wish could take adults on it as well as it looked so much fun and then finally onto the screening of Yadosagashi down in the Saturn Theatre. Just a wonderful and simple animation that has everything you’d want in it. A quick walk around the outside sections of the museum and it was time to leave. If you are ever visiting Tokyo this is a 100% must to see! I have also contacted Studio Ghibli to see if I can take a look around the actual studio, but that may be harder than getting into the White House; we will have to see.
You can see some more photographs of the Ghibli Museum and what else I’ve been spotting in Tokyo on my Flickr page here.
