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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

The Good Design Presentation 2005

GDP 2005

Wanna catch this year’s Good Design prize winners?

The Good Design Prize is part of the Good Design Product Selection System, established in 1957 by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. It is Japan’s only comprehensive valuation and recommendation system for design products. The Good Design Prize is one of a kind, surpassing other international prizes not only in terms of seniority but also scale-wise: besides focusing on industrial goods such as home electric appliances and cars, it also covers buildings, software, service system, public relations, regional developments, and so on. In other words, anything man makes and does. The examination, however, is strict, and not only design, but also functionality, quality, and safety are important criteria. The Prize generally goes to innovative “products” that score well on all these levels. The Good Design Prize promotes Japanese manufacturers, designers and even bureaucrats who, through their design, aim to change the industrial sectors, daily life and society for the better. This year, special efforts were made to introduce these products to journalists and consumers alike, and by making active use of the Good Design’s “G-mark” the organization also aims at developing new forms of business. (TAB)

It’s taking place at Tokyo Big Sight until August 27. The entrance fee is 1000 yen.

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PauseTalk

PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens June 4.

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.
PechaKucha

Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

 

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The "Jean Snow" logo is written using the free Kirimomi Swash typeface. The "M31" logo is by Ian Lynam, and is part of a series of 31 unique designs. The site's design is based on the Grid Focus WordPress theme by Derek Punsalan.

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