I will be speaking at the 14th Chohyung Exhibition and Conference (제14회 국민대학교 조형전, 조형콘퍼런스 ‘IM’ 페이지입니다) in Seoul on November 8th and 9th. I will be speaking about Timelessness versus Timeliness in Graphic Design for one lecture, and about the Emergence of Japanese Graphic Design for the second. If you are in Seoul, please do come join us!

Other speakers include Mr. Keedy from CalArts, Chris Ro from Kookmin and Hongik Universities, and many other academics and designers across multiple media from the U.S., Japan, Korea, and elsewhere!

More on Facebook.

제14회 국민대학교 조형전, 조형콘퍼런스 ‘IM’ 페이지입니다.
The 14th Chohyung Exhibition and Conference
전시 : 11월 8일~17일

The official description:
전시: 11월 8일~17일
콘퍼런스: 11월 8일~10일
국민대학교 조형대학

Exhibition: Friday, November 8th – Sunday November 17th
Conference: Friday, November 8th – Sunday November 10th
College of Design, Kookmin University

국민대학교 조형전, 조형콘퍼런스는 우리 시대의 디자인과 디자인 교육을 얘기하고자 합니다. 이성적이면서 직관적인, 전문적이지만 모두가 공유하는, 눈에 띄지 않지만 어디에나 존재하는 디자인을 끌어내어 얘기하고자 합니다. 문화와 산업에 긴밀하게 얽힌 사회활동으로서의 디자인은 어떤 개인이나 집단의 독단적인 생각으로 형성될 수 없습니다. 디자인에 대해 말하고자 한다면 먼저 주변과 동료를 진지하게 살피는 것이 우선입니다. 그래서 우리는 조형전, 조형콘퍼런스를 주목해야 합니다. 이곳에 모이는 국내외 디자이너, 교육자, 비평가, 학생은 서로를 바라보고 얘기함으로써 현재 디자인 사회의 모습을 나눌 것입니다. 한국 디자인 사회의 가장 생생한 현장을 목격하세요.

We are here to share ideas about design and design education of our time at the Chohyung Exhibition and Conference. We are to share a discourse about our area which is logical and intuitive, professional and public, transparent and omnipresent. Design as a social study and activity cannot be built by a dogmatic idea by individuals. To truly understand this area, we must look around our colleagues. Come and join this pleasant event in Kookmin University, Seoul. Witness the most vivid moment of our peer community.

On an unrelated note, we have been busy extending the identity for Tokyo NODAI‘s (National University of Agriculture) Center for International Japanese Garden Studies’ assorted departments and research initiatives.

Interior graphic design scheme for YouTube Space, a full event space and multimedia studio in the Mori Tower in central Tokyo. The project was a collaboration with Klein Dytham architecture.

Photos by Koichi Torimura

We tried a new project the other day in my Graphic Design 2 class at Temple University Japan, and I’m excited about the process and results.

I asked the students to create geometric form using glow-in-the-dark iron-on material and then apply the material to black tee shirts.

We then put on our tee shirts and examined different spatial hierarchies by composing ourselves as the design elements in the windowless 3D design studio with the lights off.

Each class member took a turn directing, and once a composition was created (in essence, designed and choreographed), it was documented by the directing individual using a digital camera with a wide aperture and slow shutter speed.

In general, it was a really fun experiential group project that allowed each student to design without using the computer while still using fairly complex form.

The inaugural graduating class of the VCFA MFA Graphic Design program will be exhibiting their Thesis Show from October 14-19 at VCFA.
It’s a really exciting thing—to work with these amazing folks. I’m really proud of each and every one of them. Each has sweated blood to bring his or her thesis to life, and I am amped to be with them during their thesis presentations and to be with them as they graduate.
See more:
http://trust.vcfa.edu/

An expanded version of my essay “Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production” was published over at Modes of Criticism.

An expanded version of my essay “Japanese Graphic Design: Not in Production” was just published over at Modes of Criticism.

A new poster for the Fall Into Darkness festival in Portland featuring Nik Turner’s Space Ritual (ex-Hawkwind) and many others. The poster is a collaboration with David D’Andrea, my old rooomate and good friend. Borne out of a mutual love for the work of Hawkwind designer Barney Bubbles, we dreamed up this collaboration, screened in multiple colors on black paper in homage to the late, ever-great Mr. Colin Fulcher.

Essayist, critic, translator, zine editor and educator Taro Nettleton will be giving a lecture in my design class at Temple University today at noon in Room 507 in Azabu Hall. The lecture is open to the public. Nettleton will be lecturing on the theme of “The Visual Playlist” – presenting an image-based mixtape of album covers which have helped shape contemporary visual culture.

We got a sweet little writeup in the CalArts blog today.

Design and development of the Videogram visual identity, website, and embedded web application. We also helped develop the user interface of the iOS and Android versions of the Videogram application.

Videogram allows users to upload web video content including files from YouTube, Vimeo and other video hosting services, as well as their own video content directly from a pc or mobile device. Videogram then outputs the video content into interactive sequential imagery so that users can analyze the content of videos, tag individual sequences/scenes.

Videogram allows users to get a quick overview of a video’s contents at a glance without watching the video from beginning to end. The visual summaries are suitable as interactive thumbnails on video publishers sites and they can also be used to help consumers browse through videos (like they do for images). Videogram allows the consumer to start the video from a point of visual interest (smaller clips) on mobile devices, thus eliminating the ‘pain points’ of streaming/buffering a large video on oversubscribed/congested mobile networks.

To generate a Videogram, a video is auto segmented based on the color features of each frame. The segments are also clustered according to their similarities. We have introduced an importance score to rank the segments. A segment is considered to be important if it is long and rare. Keyframes are extracted from highly ranked segments and sized according to their scores so that more important keyframes are presented as bigger frames. Videogram’s patented frame-packing algorithm puts the different sized keyframes in a compact “comic book” format.

Videogram is a product of CinemaCraft, a 500 Startups-backed firm based in Tokyo and San Francisco.