October 30, 2008

The Plug Plix “White Album”

Filed under: music design — Flavster @ 3:52 pm

At last ! The Plug Plix, great music from Chile, released by fueradeserie.

October 9, 2008

blauing

Filed under: Uncategorized, corporate, logo — satoshi @ 5:00 am

How did I get this job? Apparently, all the designs and stores this client noticed and liked around town were mine. He got my number after inquiring at one of the stores I did the interior design for.

Upon talking to him, he said he was going to start his own car repair, treatment, buying and selling dealership company and wanted my help. He said he would let me have complete control of the project, with no rules, design the company logo as well as the interior design of the store. He would leave everything up to me(!).

There is a lot of pressure when asked to do everything. Furthermore, this is a business he plans to run his entire life, so when it comes to design you cant do anything strange or off the wall… you got to get it right the first time. So I thought it best to sit down with him a do a proper interview.

He was totally young, like some young rapper or punk who is stoked on life, is on the hunt for beautiful women and parties, and is always in the moment. When talking to him I was hit with the impression that how cool would it be if I could take the core of his immature spirit and instead of trying to make it mature, keep it that way forever?

In Japanese we have a word we use when we see, hear and are faced with someone being ridiculously immature. We say “ao-kusai”. We call young people in this country “ao” (which means blue) and “kusai” (which means stink). As you can probably gather, this isn’t the most flattering of phrases. But if one were able to keep their “ao-kusai” spirit (minus the stupid part) for life–if you never changed your ways to become like everyone else–now that would be cool. And that’s where I came up with the word “blauing”.

“Blau” means blue in German. And the “-ing”, is the suffix for future continuous verb in English which describes a state that continues forever. One of his main clients is BMW, which is why I chose German. Plus, he had the pride of being the fourth generation to continue this company. So I wanted to portray that four somewhere. But four in Japan is an unlucky number. So, if you look at the inner section of the logo, you will find the roman numeral for three (III) and a plus (+).