This Week in Magazines

Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Jun 28, 2007

Re:S Studio Voice Casa Brutus

PEN (201) devotes its latest issue to the works of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, with the usual PEN treatment that includes a retrospective of his life, photo galleries, testimonials from admirers, etc. You can catch some of his famous photos right now at the second-floor gallery of the Leica store in Ginza.
IDEA (323) takes on a tour of “Wim Crouwel’s adventures into the experimental worlds.” It’s a terrific survey of the creator’s groundbreaking graphic design work.
EYESCREAM (2007/7) rocks out with their “Edge of Rock” cover feature, looking at the world of rock, from esthetics to, yes, the music itself.
MAC POWER (211), among many interesting pieces, presents “15 Keywords to Know 65 Movie Creators.”
If you’re a food fiend, that’s you’ll definitely want to pick up the latest issue of BRUTUS (619), which takes a look at “Food Trends 2007-2008.”
Re:S (4) continues its coverage of the slow life/LOHAS movement, explaining on the cover that everything “regional” is good!
CASA BRUTUS (88) devotes this month’s issue to current international design trends, as well as a thorough look at the fallout from this year’s Milano Salone. There’s a piece that has designers highlighting their favorite manga, and also a travel guide to Nara.
Finally an issue of STUDIO VOICE (379) I can get into! This month, it’s all about Japanese graphic design.
TOKION JAPAN (61) covers “Tokyo Creativity Now,” as a follow-up to their annual talk events. Profiles and interviews with various creators throughout, all linked to artist Naohiro Ukawa.

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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 March 5.

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.

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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.

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 Tuesday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

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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.