We’ve been doing a roundup of notable events of 2011 over at Néojaponisme including a review of the year in manga, the kanji of the year, a look back at 2011 in Japanese politics, a podcast on otaku culture featuring Matt Alt and Patrick Macias, an overview of trending in the Japanese music industry and the rise of Korean pop stars in Japan.

My pal Yoshi of Megane zine made a rad dollhouse for his daughter and rocked some of my patterned designs from the Poster Initiative series for wallpaper.

Just finished up a poster/flyer design for the Fukuoka Flower Party- a music event in Kyushu.

Nice lengthy profile just came out in the Japan Times.

I wrote a quick article about “screamers”- oversized italic exclamation points that were once a part of the American typographic vernacular, but now appear to live only in formal use in Japan over at Néojaponisme recently. Coinciding with the article is the release of a set of screamers designed by Oz Cooper via Wordshape.

You can download the full Cooper Screamer set via MyFonts/Wordshape.

In other news, the website for Le Pigeon– Portland’s hottest fine dining establishment- has gotten a bit of a revamp. New CSS including @font-face under the hood.

Big news for the end of the year: my type foundry Wordshape is now offering a selection of typefaces for use on the web. That’s right- full web-fonts for online deployment using @font-face. No better Xmas gift for the web-savvy designer in your life than a web font!

Check out the selection here!

I’m pleased as punch to have shot some images of Portland’s newest fine dining establishment, Little Bird.

The understated, French-inspired identity we designed for the restaurant came out really nicely across business cards, menus, signage and assorted print ephemera.

Congratulations to Paul, Andy, Gabe, and the other partners in the venture. The restaurant looks beautiful and the food is amazing!

My album design for Blunt Mechanic was just featured in the article 90 Notable Album covers from 2010 over at Redefine Magazine.

I have a one-of-a-kind print in the ROM: Space Knight exhibition up at Floating World in Portland, Oregon at present.

The exhibition is a fundraiser for ROM creator Bill Mantlo. You can bid on the print here. The proceeds of sales of the exhibition prints will be directly donated to Bill.

ROM was one of my favorite comic books as a kid, along with Micronauts, Mantlo’s other masterpiece. These series synthesized the perfect balance of late 70s comics- dense story lines, compelling characters, and enough romance to make adolescents feel the onset of puberty encroaching. Amazing, thought-provoking work.

On July 17, 1992, Mantlo was struck by a car. The driver of the car fled the scene and has never been identified. Not wearing a helmet at the time, Mantlo suffered severe head trauma. According to his biographer, David Yurkovich in 2006, “For a while Bill was comatose. Although no longer in a coma, the brain damage he suffered in the accident is irreparable. His activities of daily living are severely curtailed and he resides in a healthcare facility where he receives full-time care.”

In 2007, cartoonist David Yurkovich released the benefit book Mantlo: A Life in Comics, with all proceeds from the book donated to Mantlo’s brother and caregiver, Michael Mantlo, to help toward the costs of maintaining Mantlo’s care.

On December 6, 2007, the Portland, Oregon, comic-book shop Floating World Comics sponsored “Spacenight: A Tribute to Bill Mantlo”, an art show made up entirely of various artists’ interpretations of ROM, to help raise funds for Mantlo’s care.

This exhibition is the next installment of this exhibition series.

It’s been an interesting week- just finished up a short project helping Fostex with the naming for their new “201” collection of Kotori customizable headphones.

With recent forays into strategy for other brands, as well as holistic identity projects that extend into writing and naming, the scope of what the studio accomplishes feels both more comprehensive and more gratifying.

Thanks to Yuki and Chiemi at IMGSRC for the chance to collaborate on an interesting foray into brand identity.

If you aren’t familiar, the Kotori brand of headphones manufactured by Fostex are pretty much the hottest headphones out there- fully customizable earbuds and Dj headphones with thousands of color combinations. Imagine if NikeID was as rad and customizable as they purport to be. Sadly, available only in Japan.