I’ve been working with friend and producer Ryotaro Bordini Chikushi to create these new sweatshirts. The prototypes came in recently:

The garments are a custom cut by current Rehare fashion director/former Issey Miyake fashion director Erika Ohashi. They feature a typographic pattern that I curated and designed. The concept behind the pattern is “World Peace”. Ryo got a number of popular designers from all over the world to contribute the word “peace” in their particular written language system, which I then wove into a roll pattern. The contributing designers:

• Stefan Sagmeister – Latin 
• Alexander Gelman – Russian 
• Oded Ezer – Hebrew 
• Behrouz Hairiri – Farsi 
• Ahn Song-Soo – Korean 
• Da Wang – Chinese 
• Dai Nippon Type Organization – Japanese

The sweaters will go on sale this spring, limited to 1,000 pieces worldwide for men and women. You can read more about the project here.

Supergraphic for Cafe Pause‘s 5th Anniversary, taken from the recent tea tin labels, are now up at the Cafe in Ikebukuro.

New tea tin packaging is out for Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro.

Just finished the “Tokyo Fashion & Inspiration Handbook Tokyo 2009” for Five By Fifty for Pret a Porter 2009. The Handbook includes introductions, maps and essays about five of the most inspiring places in Tokyo.

Five By Fiftyが制作し、東京でもっとも刺激的な五つの場所についての紹介文と地図、エッセイをまとめた『Fashion & Inspiration Handbook Tokyo 2009』。このハンドブックのデジタル版はこちらからダウンロードできる。

Just launched: the freshly redesigned Rap-Up.com.

Some old typefaces are in the Type Design section now, as well.

The fine folks over at Pinball Publishing just posted an interview with me for their awesome company blog, CoinOp. Thanks, Laura!

Just completed a brand spanking new website for Nicole Fall, co-founder of urban safari company Bespoke Tokyo and trend analysis & market research agency Five By Fifty. Five by Fifty will be representing Tokyo this year at Prêt à Porter Paris.

Home after a month-plus jaunt across the U.S.

I was lucky to be included in Scion’s latest Installation art tour and was flown out for Miami Art Basel along with all of the other artists on the tour. The opening was really nice and I met a ton of really interesting folks as well as seeing some old friends. Thanks very much to Ray and Karen for inviting me to be on the tour and making it all happen. I appreciate it very much. Thanks to Ray, Acme, TTJ, Patrick, Yem, Codak and Skypage for ferrying me around Miami. You guys rule.

The tour will be stopping in Phoenix, DC, Minneapolis, NYC, San Jose, Philly, PDX, and LA. Check out the schedule here.

I got to design the eighth in Pinball Publishing’s designer card series recently and they came off the press the other day. Hot pink and lime green soy inks on recycled white cardstock with rounded corners. More pics soon!

The text from the brief for my recent workshop at Pacific Northwest College of Art following my lecture to the senior undergraduate students:

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”

-R. Buckminster Fuller

The city of the Future needs to be peopled with utopian citizens, humans seeking to realize their ultimate potential in the utopian city.

As the graphic designers of the future operating at the crossroads of culture in the city of tomorrow, what other cultural roles will you incorporate into your Utopian City/Self? 

We will work together to create and illustrate aspects of a collective, modular potential citizenry of the future. We will be projecting ourselves into the future to design our ultimate selves of tomorrow.

The students, the instructor Pete McCracken, and I worked together to create a modular poster/supergraphic utilizing analog processes. It was really fun.
Thanks to Pete, Paul, and the radical PNCA participants!