BEAUTIFUL/DECAY MAGAZINE » Japan

Trash awareness project in Japan

Fei — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:37:29 +0000

Does making trash bags cuter motivate litter-bugs to responsibly chuck their burger wrappers and soda cans into the patiently waiting heads of bags donning the faces of cute little rabbits and Sesame’s Oscar the Grouch? Japanese designers at MAQ Studio have started a whole “movement” around “playing with trash” in order to address and bring attention to the waste problem and how it effects the environment. To really reduce waste though, wouldn’t it have been better to just use recyclable materials to substitute for the dilemma of accumulating all these bags and not being able to do anything with them? I dunno…what do you guys think? Could this be more effective in Japan than it would be here? This sort of reminds me of those Novelty Bras I had posted about before…

Susumu Fukuzaki

Greg — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:51:36 +0000

Japanese designer and all around nice guy Susumu Fukuzaki just sent us a cool little book of us work that he calls his “new anthology” on his blog. Some fairly unusual work…I’m sort of at a loss as for any possible references to describe it. It sort of reminds me the kind of stuff the Church of the Subgenius or Negativland did in the 1990s.

D-Barcode

Greg — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:51:43 +0000

D-Barcode is a Japanese design firm which apparently specializes entirely in designing barcodes. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t speak Japanese and pretty much the only English on their site is their slogan – BIG IDEAS ARE SMALL, DESIGN BARCODE. Can any Japanese readers tell us more?

Akira Nishitake

Greg — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:14:22 +0000

I came across the works of Akira Nishitake and fell in love with his illustrations (his website is pretty fun too). Akira Nishitake is a Japanese designer and illustrator. He explores a wide range of work styles including painting, drawing manga, and font design. I don’t know too much about him because his whole site is in Japanese, but definitely check him out.

Tomokazu Matsuyama

Greg — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:23:52 +0000

Tomokazu Matsuyama was born in Japan. He moved to the US when he was around ten years old, not speaking any English, and being overwhelmed by the culture shock of 1980s Los Angeles. His work is a reflection of this upbringing. Matsuyama’s paintings envision traditional Japanese imagery through the lens of American pop art, creating a unique and beautiful hybrid.

Kimiko Yoshida

Greg — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:14:36 +0000

Torero by Picasso

“Painting” is the name of this recent series of self portraits from Japanese artist Kimiko Yoshida. In each photograph, she attempts to replicate a character from a painting. More after the jump.

Laughing Girl by Vermeer

The Red Egyptian Bride by Harry Winston

Rembrandt by Himself

Arearea by Gauguin

Masashi Kawamura

Greg — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:28:36 +0000

“日々の音色 (Hibi no neiro)” is the name of this new music video for the band SOUR, directed by Japanese designer/art director/video guy Masashi Kawamura. The amount of choreography involved in this video, which is comprised of clips of fans shot on their webcams, is so staggering I don’t know how they possibly could have done it…but I also don’t know how they could have faked it. After the jump, more work from Kawamura, who’s done a lot of other cool, clever stuff in various mediums.

This is a flipbook that projects a rainbow above the pages when you flip it.

Tisshoes, shoes that are made to look like a tissue box.

A module-based children’s toy (prototype).