Watching the Android Developer videos and reading through the SDK, it sounds like Android will give a developer like me the power to create not just useful applications but interesting mash-ups using other applications. For instance, I quite enjoyed this video where a Google engineer is showing off his bar-code reader application. Another engineer than utilized the bar-code reader as part of his application which upon scanning books, the application would automatically retrieved book information off the internet and add it to a personal list complete with pictures and information. Additionally, the fact that the platform is open-source, customizable and applications are easily replaceable means I’ll be able to customize and fine-tune my smart phone to my specific needs. My dream is to have some kind of smart application that would not only transcribe voice calls but also analyze and parse the data accordingly, so that for example, it can automatically input a meeting in a calendar or a location on a map.

Before making any decisions though, the only thing holding me back are the Android phones out there. The Xperia X10 looks ideal but unfortunately a bit pricey at the moment. Rumor has it more phones will be released early next year so I shall wait and see. Until then, I may find myself playing around with the emulated developer kit on my desktop.

Unhappy macbook, authors rendition.

So once the realization has sunk in – it usually leads to nervous breakdowns, deadlines crushing you, spontaneous hair loss, sudden Tourette’s and manical laughing fits amongst other symptoms, that are not really the point of this post.

So, after picking yourself up you realize that you have bought some sort of extended warranty. (You have – do you?) Phew! So you go on and take it to the next store, not before making a reservation though. There you will be greeted by slightly overworked but nice personnel which will take note of your machine’s status… “Oh it’s not working…. at all.” and ship it in for repairs.

You also get to sign a nice little death waiver. Death what? Ah. Whatever – I sheepishly filled in my name, telephone number and my favorite pet’s name, amongst other things.

Then, four days later, you get a package expedited – containing your repaired machine. Looks like new, smells like new, too. Except for the ugly crack at the bottom, which they didn’t mind to fix. Well, let’s put it on the desk, plug it in and start it up. It boots up to…

… reveal the “Setup Assistant”. That’s the program that runs the first time you purchase a new machine to ask for your name, address and other details. But – this machine is not new – there’s still the crack at the bottom!? What?

Slowly the realization sunk in. They wiped the drive. Boom, just as Steve likes to say. “Boom.” They did this to help the fact that the machine was not turning on, something that was obviously a hardware fault. And I had waived any right of complaint by signing the above mentioned “Death waiver”. Except that, when bringing it in, they had failed to notify me of this little .. ahem .. detail.

Hmm… I also put my telephone number and mail address on there. Would it have been hard to give me a ring, or shoot an email my way? “Mr. van Dyck – we’d like to erase your harddrive as a last ditch effort to get your machine back into working order. Is that OK?”

To which I would have replied: “No, thanks, just fix the hardware. I know how to reinstall OS X myself. Cheers!”

But I guess, they would rather have the Apple Care operation going smoothly. And I was the obvious roadblock – data be damned. I mean, like the name implies – they care for the Apple — not you.
Fair call, then.
Thanks guys!

I did find that different nationalities brought their own flavour to how they design and what impressed me most was the participation from the Korean contribution. I felt they were really the most creative and exploratory in most of their designs, however if they were to be successful in Japan the level of execution would need to step up to another level. The event allows me, as a graphic designer, feel previliged enough to directly compare product and architectural design from one country to another and I thoroughly enjoyed this. Having it all laid out in front of you and also having the designer right there to talk to about how they got to their conclusion is an exceptional benefit of events like these. I look forward to the next one.

Here are some of the snaps I took over the weekend:

Busy boy

The entrance to Design Tide

A 2-way drawer unit

Flower holders

Jewelry box

Paper light

Net bonding tape

Sore ass

100% Tokyo

A view of the gate on the way out.

The range of talent and interest and sheer ability in areas of illustration, fashion & accessories and costume, graphic design, painting, textile art, dance, song, tattoos, animation and many more was quite a sight. the two days of visual and aural extravaganza pulls in all sorts of contributors, and not simply from these shores. Often foreigners get involved in the exhibition as well and on the same basis as the Japanese – for either fun, interest, or business.

It had been a number of years since I had visited last and I was keen to see how my memory of the event would compare to the current fads and trends. My initial response was to take in all that I could but after my 20th or so jewelry stand and cos-play fanatic my interest and energy level started to wane. The distraction and all encompassing wealth of activity was still no match for a pachinko parlour however I did feel that there seemed to be a certain sameness that permeated throughout the event. The general numbing effect of this was on occasion rattled from me when I saw some really fantastic skill and professionalism on display. Among the normal day to day manga fanatics and goths there were really some great illustrators with really strong ability for life drawing from their imagination. As I come from this type of background seeing people doing it with greater quality AND quantity with multiple media was a real thrill. Nowadays there are so many people out there who can think creatively and apply themselves to their work with amazing design sensibility, but have almost no ability to physically make a mark on a surface.

Here are just a few snapshots of the best that I found. I hope I can get an opportunity to work with talent like this in the near future.

Moriyasu Kowase: excellent vector graphics of daily Japanese streetlife.

‘Shimadat’: Multiple sketch and life-drawing styles and beautifully put together.

Beautiful pencil and ink work. I just love this stuff.

An interesting illustrative approach to cereal packaging.

Simple and fun – The polar bear, drawn by an 11 year old, was snapped right up!

And for those people who wanted to see some of the more fantastical creativity that was there on the day, have a look at this!

Don’t ask me why… Japan – Gotta love it!

The Good Design Awards Exhibition (Visit website)
The Design Hub in Tokyo Midtown
Naturally the awards cover a whole range of design fields and not simply graphic design.
Taking a visit to the venue alone is a very pleasant experience; not only is Midtown a very plush site, but also it is one corner of the Roppongi Art Triangle. The others are the Mori Arts Center Gallery, located at the Roppongi Hills Complex and The National Art Center, Tokyo. Download this pdf for a detailed map of the area. There are a huge amount of places to visit.

I have a particular fondness for Midtown as it has a concentration of venues within the vicinity and it was just built when I first moved to Tokyo so I became attached to it very quickly. As I will detail later there are a number of events being held here as part of the Design Week and I also appreciate the fact that the area has a mild-mannered mood by day and then by night… well, Roppongi by night – I hardly need to go into too much detail.

The Design Hub has always a relaxing and settling environment to enjoy the exhibits on display. There are also a lot of finely produced fliers and advertisements to keep art-lovers and those interested in the creative circuit to keep in the know. While I won’t go into my opinion of the awarded designs there were two particular winners that appealed to my graphic side. One was the small “Starter Kit” for airbrushing, and of course the traditional stationery staple of Yamato glue products.

The exhibition goes onto the 8th November.

Tokyo Graphic Passport – International Magazine Conference (Visit website)
Kudankaikan 12th October 2009
This event was great! Not only was I able to receive a huge amount of material from the +81 magazine team, but I was also able to have seriously creative individuals go through the thought processes and goals behind their publications, one after another, in front of me. The event space itself was great too. Very western in its design and traditional in its architecture that after a while I was ended up thinking I was at home listening to visiting experts. It was only when the Japanese presenters came on stage without any translators I came back around and had to pay attention to the Japanese.

I’ve also always been interested in how certain styles exist among presenters and of course among different nationalities when speaking publicly. That aside the presentations were from 11.30am to 7.30pm, featuring speakers from the Purple Prose magazine – Art Director, Cristophe Brunnquell; 032c Creative Director, Jorg Koch; Newwork Creative Directors, Studio Newwork, Fantastic Man’s Creators, Jop van Bennekom & Gert Jonkers; Intersection Art Director, Yorgos Tloupas; Art Director and Graphic Designer, Hideki Nakajima; and Werk Creative Director, Theseus Chan.

I was blown away by the quality of the material of these publications and despite a tiring day sitting on my back side, I felt incredibly enriched from the experience. Suddenly I’m considering doing something similar myself. Anybody want to start a magazine with me?

Its funny how work can impose itself so heavily on your own time and personal schedule, that doing anything but sitting in front of a monitor can seem like a far-fetched fantasy. However, once you can get out and about, even just once or twice, to see what else is going on, can be such a refreshing experience invigorating your own creativity. This is definitely the time for it too. With October at mid-point its high time that people take advantage of the oncoming plethora of activities in and around Tokyo for Design Week.

Design Week & Upcoming Events
DESIGN FESTA (Visit Website) (English Website)
Tokyo Big Sight
24th, 25th Oct.
International Art Event
Admission – 1 Day: ¥800/1000 – 2 Days: ¥1,500/1,800

DESIGN TOUCH (Visit Website)
Tokyo Midtown
23rd Oct. – 3rd Nov.
Theme: ’shaping a dream into a design’
Admission – Free

TOKYO DESIGNERS WEEK 2009/100% DESIGN TOKYO (Visit Website)
Jingu Gaien Aoyama
30th Oct. – 3rd Nov.
Theme: ‘Love Green’
Admission: ¥2,000

DESIGN TIDE (Visit Website) (English Website)
Main Site: Tokyo Midtown Hall
30th Oct. – 3rd Nov.
Trade Show that mainly centres on product design
Admission – ¥1,000

CREATOR’S PARK VOL. 1 (Visit Website)
Claska Gallery
22nd – 24th Oct.
Subsidiary event of Japan Fashion Week
Admission – Free

Just a little something I saw under the Yamanote bridge in Ebisu. Great illustration!

Although in a purely hypothetical exercise in which the winner was determined by their bid website, I would pick Tokyo.
Here’s why:

- Use of open source technologies: L.A.M.P. with MovableType as their CMS. The other sites are using ASP.NET which is a great technology but based on personal experience, require more time and costs (licensing fees) to develop.
- I quite like the main navigation bar. Hovering over the menu item changes the background to a different color. The different color scheme is also utilized on each of the pages which works well.
- The use of Flash at the top to present another tier of menus is pretty effective and clever. The Flash makes some use of animation which is subtle enough to not distract the user from the rest of the website.
- The restaurant page is wonderfully presented. The layout is well-structured, the top page is sleek and the placing of images on the individual restaurants are well done.

But don’t take my word for it; the other candidate websites are pretty good as well:

Rio
Spain
Chicago

This weekend I pushed the boundaries! (He said knowing that he barely drew the curtains, never mind pushing any boundaries.)

The following two images were a little on the cheeky side. One of which is probably illegal and the other should be. You can make your own minds up as to which is which.

From here on you will find all our musings on our professional and personal lives (I know I have no life so I’m still thinking of something to replace that with), and of course you will be able to see what makes us tick, what we get up to when not cracking the whip, reading other people’s blogs or bashing our keyboards in frustration.

Stay a while and read some of our useful hints and tips on sales, working with creatives or simply checking whether we’ve finished your design that should have been at the presses an hour ago.

Looking forward to see what comes next,

- Raymondo

2. RssRunner (Free)
Don’t know what to do on your commute? How about keeping up to speed with the world’s latest happenings? This is where this handy little app comes in. It allows you to download RSS feeds from websites you specify for later offline viewing. While it is not as feature-rich as the excellent Newsstand app ($2.99) it still gets the job done and makes lengthy commutes a lot more worthwile.

3. FileAid (Free)
Want to copy that PDF or Word document for later reading or even editing on your iPod or iPhone? No problem with FileAid, which lets you copy and open all kinds of files on your device without resorting to hacking. Simply start the app, put it into transfer mode, and access your device via FTP and get copying. Then you can edit or view all supported files on the go and even copy them back to your computer later. Not as smooth as Apple’s own implementation could have been, but worthwhile none the less.

4. MonoSpace ($0.99)
Well… Okay I said productivity apps – and this is obviously a game. But, but this is not only a relaxing puzzle game, but it is also a very good one at that! Twist a cube that contains a subset of smaller cubes in three dimensions and condense them down into two dimensions to make pathways for you to follow. The levels get more and more mind-bending as the game progresses. Great puzzle fun. Still in the dark? Check out this video.