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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Feb 23, 2007

The Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design

The Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design

When I was last at Junkudo, I spotted this terrific book, THE SECRET SENSE OF JAPANESE MAGAZINE DESIGN. It was put together by CAP — the company behind most of the great layouts you see in Japanese magazines these days — and covers the history of Japanese magazine design by spotlighting 12 or so magazines (titles like POPEYE, ESQUIRE, and STUDIO VOICE). The intro is bilingual, and the rest of the text is Japanese-only, but don’t let this stop you from picking it up, since it’s all about the layouts found within, and that’s what you mostly get here.

Also, while looking up the link for CAP, I was greeted by a major update to their website. Should now give you a better idea of what they’ve done in the past.

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SNOW Magazine

Where's all the regular art/design-related content you used to see here? Check out SNOW Magazine, a Tokyo-based online magazine featuring news and guest columns -- see the full list of contributors -- covering the cultural landscape of Tokyo/Japan.

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 is September 6.

PLAY is a series of events with Jean Snow spinning some of his favorite virtual discs in a casual setting at Cafe Pause. See the setlist for previous editions here, and subscribe to a feed of the mixes.
Game

Being a survey of recommended titles for your gaming pleasure. New games are added 2-3 times weekly, and all selections are by your host, Jean Snow, a Tokyo-based writer and gamer.

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.
Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 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, and The Japan Times. He's also the founder and editor-in-chief of SNOW Magazine.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Pecha Kucha Night

He's a member of the Pecha Kucha team, working on various projects, including updating Pecha Kucha Daily, a blog that highlights the creativity coming out of PKN events worldwide.

PauseTalk

He serves as editor-at-large at Néojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx.

He also writes a monthly column covering Japanese product design for The Japan Times, called "On Design." It appears on the last Thursday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

Colophon

The "Jean Snow" logo is made up of the Blackout open source 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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