I’ve been a bit quiet on the SNOW Magazine Cafe front, but yes, it’s still happening next month at Cafe Pause (August 1-30), and I’m very happy to reveal the poster for the event. It was designed by my GOOD Inc. compadre, Luis Mendo, and I absolutely love the illustration he came up with. The poster will appear at the entrance to to cafe, and a slightly different version will be used for the flyer (and big thank to Hiyoko Imai for the help with that).

I also have a very exciting new development regarding the event — and SNOW Magazine in general — that is going to be very cool. I’ll announce more soon, but for now let’s just say that it truly embraces the medium that is being celebrated at the exhibition.

Don’t you just hate posts that refer to the lack of posts on a blog? Oh well, such is what you must deal with on occasion, as your humble blogger feels the need to assure everyone that it “ain’t dead yet.”

I’m coming off what has a been quite a project — it’s no secret that I’m a contributor to the upcoming updates to The Rough Guide to Tokyo and Japan, set to come out in early 2011. I still have a bit of follow-up work to do, but the bulk of it was handed in the other day, and so suddenly I have a bit more breathing room.

Throughout this I continue with my work for PechaKucha — for those who don’t know, part of what I do there is update the PechaKucha Daily blog, but I do a lot of stuff on the administrative side of things as well. And without going into details, I can tell you that I’m lining up a lot of interesting things for PK this year, and I can’t wait to see it come to fruition, and be able to share it with everyone.

Part of this involves the fact that this year I’ve associated myself with Amsterdam-based art director Luis Mendo, a good friend I’ve mentioned on this blog a few times, and who I met just last year when he came to Japan for a 3-month “inspirational retreat.” Luis runs his own company, GOOD Inc., for which he pulls help from the Goodfellas Network, an amazing collection of potential collaborators who work in pretty much all fields. Not only am I a “Goodfella” — both professionally and personally, me thinks — but me, Luis, and graphic designer and artist Hiyoko Imai have formed a Japan branch of GOOD Inc. Our expertise is magazine-related production, so do get in touch if you are interested in working with us. And yes, we are currently developing something PK-related (which is how this paragraph came about).

Other than that, SNOW Magazine continues at a fine pace, and if you missed it, here’s a media kit we recently put together for the site — it includes details about advertising on the site, both pricing and placement, as well as a few reasons on why you might want to do so. I’m of course very excited about the upcoming “SNOW Magazine Cafe” event as well, and have already gotten lots of amazing contributions — imagine my surprise when the first email I received after announcing it came from The New York Times Magazine! If you’d like to participate, please get in touch. Oh, and there’s a great collaboration with the site Poolga coming too.

I think that’s enough for now. Yes, I’ve got my hands in other things — of course — and I’ll try to cover more of it here in the days/weeks to come. For all you Radio OK Fred fans, a bit of good news: me, Ay2, and Yoshi are getting together next Wednesday to record a new episode, so expect that to be online very soon (very likely on that day).

After I tweeted that I got some business cards made for SNOW Magazine, a few people asked to see what it looks like, and so here goes. Big thanks again to my fellow GOOD Inc. compatriot Luis Mendo for the image on the front, and font suggestion for my name on the back — it’s the font off which the SNOW logo was created, Los Niches.

And here we go with a reminder that this month’s edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 37) happens tonight (January 11) at Cafe Pause, with the usual start time of 20:00 — the cafe is reserved from 19:30, so feel free to come early. Here’s a link to the Facebook event page.

Max Hodges will be on hand again to add to the “PauseTalk Portraits” series — I’ll reveal tonight how it will eventually tie into this year’s PauseTalk 4th anniversary celebrations — and I’ll also have a few copies of a beautiful printed version of Luis Mendo’s illustrated Tokyo map to hand out.

I finally announced it in my big year-end post, and now’s the time to start revealing more details about my soon-to-launch web magazine, SNOW. I don’t want to give an official launch date — it sort of depends on when everything is ready to do go — but I can tell you that it will indeed be “soon.” In the meantime, I’ll be writing a few posts here over the coming week to explain what exactly this project is all about, why I did it, what I hope to achieve with, and what you can expect from it.

I’d like to start by revealing the lovely logo for it, designed by my good friend Luis Mendo, an Amsterdam-based art director whose work you can also see featured at the entrance of Cafe Pause right now.

Funny story about this design. What you see now is very close to the initial sketch that Luis first sent me — he produced a few more options, but I kept going back to this one, and one thing that was so strange was how the “O” matched exactly the very first hanko I had when I first came to Japan (I since had to change it because it wasn’t legal, and had to replace it with one that has “SNOW” written in English). Just a coincidence, I know, but one that touched me.

I announced it a month back, and now the fifth edition of the “Cafe Pause Poster Series” is finally up at the entrance of the cafe. Again, huge thanks to Luis for doing this — it’s a great way to kick off 2010 at Cafe Pause! You can better see the poster here, as well as an explanation of the concept behind it.

I’m very happy to be able to share the latest entry in my “Cafe Pause Poster Series” (#5), a contribution by Amsterdam-based art director Luis Mendo. You know about the Tokyo map he just produced for the next issue of Journal de Nîmes, and now here’s also his homage to the cafe. The concept revolves around the seats found in the cafe — there are 24 (all pictured), with 23 people shown, the idea being that the 24th customer is you!

The poster should occupy the entrance of the cafe sometime this week, but unfortunately won’t be ready for tomorrow night’s PauseTalk (Vol. 35).

Not “my Tokyo,” but rather my friend Luis Mendo’s take on the city we love to love. Earlier this year Luis stayed in Tokyo for a 3-month “inspirational retreat” — I posted about his terrific illustrated Tokyo diary back in April — and now here’s a sneak peak at a map he’s created for an upcoming issue of Journal de Nîmes, a newspaper for the denim store Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam. I’m very happy to see that Ikebukuro gets a mention, both for its Muji and Cafe Pause.

A selection at this year’s Cannes film festival, Map of the Sounds of Tokyo is an upcoming film directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Rinko Kikuchi (Babel). The film’s official site has a trailer up. Via Luis Mendo.

It wasn’t the insane turnout from last month, but the twenty or so participants for this month’s edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 30) contributed to a better talk — where everyone can join in — even if things did get more opiniated and heated than they usually do. I think everyone got a lot out of the discussions we had — which veered a lot towards photography this time out — and I must thank everyone who attended and contributed to a great evening. Huge thanks also to Martin Holtkamp for the photos — I’ve included a few in this post, but you’ll find more in the photo section of the PauseTalk group on Facebook.

Please note that next month’s edition (Vol. 31) will be held on May 11, which is the second Monday of the month — I’m pushing it back to avoid conflict with the Golden Week holiday. Below, a partial list of participants — please email me if I missed you (I’m always bad at collecting everyone’s contact info).

• Alexis Alvarez-Suzuki (Photographer)
• Beatriz Inglessis (Artist)
• Erika Nishizato (Designer)
• Hikaru Miyakawa (Artist)
• Hiroko Oda (Filmmaker)
• James Okubo (Filmmaker)
• Jean Snow (Doer of Things)
• Jeff Wichmann (Musician)
• Joseph Keenan (Graphic Designer)
• Josh McKible (Illustrator)
• Kristina Dryza (Strategic Insight)
• Luis Mendo (Art Director)
• Martin Holtkamp (Photographer)
• Max Hodges (Publisher/Photographer)
• Megumi Nishikura (Filmmaker)
• Ryoko Tsukada (Photo Editor)
• Scott Popular (Gamer)
• Tim Rudder (Photographer/Animator)

Art director Luis Mendo decided to take a 3-month “inspirational retreat” in Tokyo, and he’s been keeping some brilliantly illustrated diaries of his everyday experiences — see the Flickr photoset of some of the pages. He’s also putting together a great web-based diary of his Tokyo adventures, featuring photos, videos, etc.