American designer, musician, living in Tokyo since 2001.
Blog
Jun 13, 2008
Jun 01, 2008
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We’re in.
Apr 03, 2008
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This essay on the ethics of moonlighting designers seems to be making the rounds, and strikes me as completely ignorant of how reputations are built in the web industry.
Full disclosure, I’m a friend and ex-colleague of Luke Wroblewski, a designer at Yahoo whom the author uses as an example of a well-respected web professional, whose personal design consultancy “makes him look flighty and unprofessional” and “makes both his consultancy and Yahoo!’s design practice look a bit dodgy”.
On the contrary, I bet that the existence and maintenance of that very site is part of why Yahoo decided he was right for the job in the first place. The work and thinking contained within the site shows that Luke is aggressive, independent, well-rounded and engaged with the outside world, all qualities I look for and admire in AQ’s small staff. Likewise, as a prospective client of Luke’s, his position at Yahoo combined with his lukew.com presence would give me a pretty good idea of the type and caliber of design problems he’s capable of addressing.
More than ever, people in general create multiple online identities as a way to make themselves easy to find, give the world a more complete understanding of who they are, and attract and maintain interest in what they’re doing. While the writing style of lukew.com may be a bit more corporate than it needs to be, the site essentially acts as one these identities for Luke, and I, for one, am glad that he continues to maintain it. I imagine his employer is too.
Apr 01, 2008
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I’m going to be hosting the next TAB Talks, featuring a presentation and Q&A with type designer Christian Schwartz. Christian has created custom typefaces for publications and companies like Esquire, Wallpaper*, The New York Times, Bosch and Deutsche Bahn. His typefaces for the Guardian were an integral part of the newspaper’s acclaimed redesign in 2005.The talk will be held in English with Japanese translation, at Gotanda Sonic in Gotanda. Hope to see you there!
Mar 12, 2008
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Late March/Early April promises to be a good time for art and design fans, with major auctions, awards, exhibitions and festivals happening throughout the city. In January, we started working on a handful of related projects with TAB and Marunouchi to get ready for their respective contributions to the celebration. This week, we finally have something out in the open to show for it, a one-pager for Marunouchi Art Weeks, an umbrella for all the Marunouchi-area art events happening this season. There’s much more still at the printers, but I couldn’t wait to share the link.
Mar 08, 2008
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Japanese and foreign companies make all sorts of localization attempts for their websites, many of which are flawed and puzzling. I’ve always assumed there was some internally sound reasoning for what and how they decided to localize, and that it must be serving someone or some purpose, even if I personally found it useless.
I’m struggling to imagine the someone or some purpose behind a top-page only English version of Rakuten, “Japan’s biggest online shopping mall”. For anyone comfortable enough with Japanese to use the rest of the site, an English top page is unnecessary, and for anyone without the Japanese skills to use the rest of the site, an English top page does nothing to help them complete a purchase. They didn’t even bother to put the word Rakuten in English anywhere in the site’s masthead.
I’d love to hear the back story on this. Anyone have any details?
Feb 11, 2008
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Yesterday I dropped by Bic Camera to trade in Eiko and my 2+ year old au mobile phones for new ones. The purchase was inspired by a “campaign” mailer that offered one of several winter 2007 models for free, through a combination of limited-time-only discounts and points. Eiko chose the W53CA, because it has a nice camera and I called dibs on the green Infobar (more on that later).
The green Infobar was sold out at Bic, so I moved on to Eiko’s W53CA, flagging down a rep. Before escorting me to his 3-card Monty table, he kindly warned me of the three or four “optional” programs I would be *forced* to sign up for, regardless of which phone I chose or where I bought it.
This was the first trade in I’d done since phone numbers were decoupled from carriers, and little did I know how absurdly complex the process had become since then. In this rant, I won’t even get into the different minute and packet plans, since they’ve been around long enough to be beaten on by more knowledgable critics than me.
Full Support Course vs. Simple Course
As far as I can tell, by buying the phone at the discounted price, I automatically signed up for Full Support. They are essentially supporting you by giving you a ¥21,000 (USD200) discount on the handset’s invisible retail price, but *locking you into the carrier and the phone for 2 years*, with penalty fees if you change either. Additionally, Full Support is the gateway for the standard diner menu of minute/packet plans, whearas the Simple Course, offers just a few cheaper plans with no prepaid minutes or packets.Full Support is clearly nothing more than a tactic to scare beloved customers into sticking with au, now that they are no longer locked in. It seems to also be a replacement to the tiered handset pricing scheme that made new phones progressively cheaper the longer you held on to your previous one.
指定割り (Call Designation Discount)
This “discount” option costs ¥300 a month. It allows you a 60% discount on calls made to any three phone numbers. I guess this would allow certain people who call the same numbers all the time to select a cheaper plan with less pre-paid minutes, but even then it’s hard to know if the numbers would work in your favor since au doesn’t send detailed call records with your monthly bill.I was forced to sign up for this option, but canceled it the next day. At worst, I’ll be charged the first month’s ¥300, but I’m sure there are plenty of customers who forget to cancel, and will now be short pocket change for a night of Karaoke once a year.
待ちウタ (Waiting song)
Ever call a friend on Docomo and hear some lame melody trying to make love to the dial tone? That’s Machi-uta, and it’s come to au at ¥300 per month.I was forced to sign up for this twisted spawn of a focus group gone wrong wrong wrong. I canceled the next day.
安心携帯サポ−ト (Safe mobile support)
This is essentially Apple Care for au, at, you guessed it, ¥300 per month. Five year repair warranty, discounted repairs on stuff not covered by warranty, discounted replacement costs, two free batteries over four years, and extra points. It’s actually not a bad deal for anyone who use a single handset for 3+ years, but for the rest of us, it’s just another sleazy fee.I was forced to sign up for this too. I canceled the next day.
誰でも割 (Everybody Discount)
No it’s not the next Japanese dance craze. A few years ago, there was a “Wari” (discount) war between carriers, starting with a couples discount, followed by a family discount, then a students discount, second handset discount, a discount for the elderly, the left handed, and finally, gas station attendants with leap year birthdays. Au then decided that it’d be easier if they just gave a discount to *everybody*, but generously decided to keep all the other discounts, probably to take the sting off the second mortgage you take out to pay off all those ¥300 yen fees.Believe it or not, Everybody Discount doesn’t cost anything, but is only available if you lock yourself in for two years. Wait, didn’t they cover that with Full Support?
In Conclusion
For all the convenience the mobile phone industry provides me, it has few competitors for my disgust. I’d like to believe that their convoluted games were forced by some genuinely unavoidable industry-specific economic factors that I’m unaware of, but deep down I suspect that they’d rather nickel and dime profits out of their customers with useless add-ons and devious pricing schemes than earn it through good ideas.Postscript on the green infobar
Undeterred, I hit Ito Yokado yesterday, where I’d seen the model in stock the previous week. It was still available, but alas, only available to new customers. Apparently, after 6 years and $6000 of loyalty to au, I’m only worthy of grey or red & white check.
Feb 05, 2008
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These veggies showed up at my local Ito Yokado about a year ago. Each one has a line drawing of the (Japanese) face and name of the farmer responsible for the crop. I’m not certain there’s a significant difference in quality, but it’s a clever way to calm food source paranoias in a country where American beef with spinal tissue and frozen Chinese dumplings laced with rat poison lead the nightly news.
Jan 24, 2008
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During a recent visit with type designer Christian Schwartz, he described his encounter with original Granjon type with the awe and adoration usually reserved for great works of art or architecture. My own exposure to metal type has been limited to the small collection at my design school in Illinois. At the time I was immaturely suspicious and disinterested in anything that wasn’t made tomorrow, so regrettably I never got around to rummaging through the cases. At the time, my only other exposure to older type was the frustration of trying to design with digitizations, an experience that turned me off to serif faces for years.
Thanks to a great new article explaining why “digital classics” like Bembo underperform compared to the originals, I’m relieve to know that my distaste was at least partially because of the digitizations themselves.
Jan 22, 2008
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It appears that Temple University’s Intermediate Topics in Media and Telecommunication Production course is using Hitotoki as inspiration for one of its assignments.
There aren’t many details to chew on, but I’m really happy to know that Hitotoki has matured enough to inspire this kind of repurposing. Can’t wait to see what else 2008 has in store for the project.
Oh, and for those of you live in a dark hole with nothing to sustain you other than cave wall condensation and this rss feed, we are throwing a Hitotoki Party in Tokyo next week!
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Design by Office of Mesker
Show this weekend too!