This is part of the lifestream of Paul Baron, co-founder of Tokyo Art Beat, AQ, Hitotoki.
More on http://aka.me
If you haven't visited our project hitotoki.org recently, then now is the time.
The small literary website building an emotional map of Tokyo is growing faster than we ever imagined, with London and NYC launched recently and the impending launch of 3 cities DC, Paris (in French and English) and Shanghai!
If you haven't submitted a story, now is the time!
Looking forward to reading you soon online.
Hitotoki Tokyo has launched in Japanese, after the successful launch of the English version. We have a few stories up there already so go have a look.
We will also open in New York in September and are currently looking for submissions.
I have published an article on how to make better presentations at Pecha-Kucha Night events. It is up on the AQ blog, where I work.
The 3rd collection of our TAB T-shirts has just been released in our new online store. 5 designers have donated graphics illustrating their love of Tokyo to help us promote the city as a lively and happening place, as well as support our Non-Profit Organization team (paid staff and volunteers). The Shop has been entirely redesigned and includes a new bilingual cart system, interfacing with Paypal.
TAB has redesigned. A slight redesign with a more modern look and a wider frame to provide us with elbow room for future growth. How do you like it?
We have also relaunched TABlog, TAB's event review blog, with an entirely new look and feel, closer to that of an online magazine. More visual and structure on the front page allow us to promote more varied content and do so independently of its publication date.
Finally, TAB is hiring... We are looking for a new event data editor.
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In unrelated news, my friend Kevin has finally launched his wonderful One Life Japan eco-business. They specialize in fun, intellectually stimulating, physically satisfying, and environmentally sound educational bike tours in Japan.
I will be joining one of his tours in the next few months.
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Check some of our selected works, and bookmark our new blog.
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The site is a little non-commercial project we put together in a few weeks as a joint effort between AQ (little design studio where I work) and Chin Music (Tokyo/Seattle-based publishers).
The site will attempt to record and broadcast short location-based narratives written by people that have visited Tokyo or live in the city.
The stories, like the title indicates (hitotoki in Japanese means a single moment), should capture those special moments one encounters when living in Tokyo where it just feels good/weird/tough to be here, and must be tied to a specific location in the city.
Hopefully, the memories emerging from the site will allow people to enjoy a more intimate and deeper view of the town, its people, and the authors profiled alongside the stories.
Updated: We have launched!! hitotoki.org
We are looking for sumissions for our May 1st launch, and so if you read this site and are in my address book, know that I will probably persecute you until you finally give in and share one of your stories with the audience of hitotoki.
You have been warned! ;-)
A good place to start is to download our submission file which contains many more details on what we are looking for and as the word-count stands attractively low at between 200-500 words, I am expecting to receive quite a few slices of location-based memories from you.
Let us also know what you think of the stone-carved logo. For the katakana readers among us, notice the fat ヒ ト ト キ shapes used as backgrounds for the roman hi to to ki letters.
One last thing, please let anybody you think could be interested in participating know about this site and don't hesitate to bookmark the site in del.icio.us and other sites or introduce it on your blog. tah!
See you on May 1st.
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Taking inspiration from a recent trend in the US IT industry, Tokyo Art Beat has debuted a new section: "TAB Jobs".
TAB Jobs is a new job board that will launch on the 1st of December with job offers specially targeted at the dynamic community of creative professionals living and working in Tokyo, Japan.
Finding the right job in our industries is a difficult endeavor, with too few tools specifically targeted at us. We want to make TAB Jobs this new tool, where companies can advertise directly to a core target of designers and where we can easily find jobs specific to our skills.
- It is bilingual and nationwide, where offers can be posted in Japanese or English only, or both.
- It is easy to post and browse, using the same design that has made TAB so great to use. Categories will include: Art, Print/Photo, Web/IT, Space/Product, Screen/AV, Business, Other.
- It is be affordable: only 20,000 yen for a 30 day job listing. All proceeds support the future of TAB, a non-profit service of GADAGO NPO.
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[AQ] The Institut is more than the most popular French language school in Tokyo. With its regular festivals, expositions and performances, a multimedia library, restaurant, and cinema, it's no less than the epicenter of activity for Tokyoites in love with French culture and language. All of this is now apparent on its web site, following the recent redesign by AQ.
The biggest improvements:
- Permanent individual event pages to establish a record that can be shared, printed, revisited and indexed by search engines.
- Vivid, human photography highlighting the institut's charismatic teachers, and stylish yet approachable decor.
- A flexible, cross-linked information architecture that encourages discovery of other facilities and programs.
- A standards-compliant platform, ensuring accessibility for everyone, including visitors with disabilities, and optimal visibility on search engines.
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To allow me to keep on taking care of TAB and work on my next super secret project, I have decided to go back to freelancing.
I have therefore updated and relaunched the portfolio area of the site (Am I the only one on the planet using Flickr to show my portfolio?)
So if you love me, give me some work... print, web, usability/interface...
Get in contact.
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Today, I reactivated the photo galleries /AD page. All links now go to Flickr. And I am really liking it. It's so powerful, the slideshows are a devil invention to make you cry in front of your pics...
There is still some cleanup to be done, more than 1300 pics without any tags, many tags to delete or rewrite, but the essential is here: my 3600+ pics of the past 3.5 yrs and all my previous comment/tags (from my previous galleries) were saved and transfered automatically to Flickr thanks to this great script.
And here is the RSS feed.
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We feel that the site will appeal to the fervent artgoers who want to check it all out and built it to also encourage the more casual visitors to turn off their TV and get out.
By making the website fully bilingual we also wanted to broadcast past the Japanese people, past the borders of Japan and reach out to all the foreigners living in Japan or planning on visiting Japan as well as the art professionals living abroad.
We can now all follow the beat.
Welcome to Tokyo,
Welcome to Tokyoartbeat.com!
This is the fruit of 11 months of hard work. Our beta phase is only starting now. There is lots more to come and I am pretty sure you're gonna love this!
(2004-10-02)
Update:
4 months already since we launched, and we have passed the bar of 1000 events published on this site.
That's pretty impressive! Who knew Tokyo's art scene was so active!
But we have also been busy working on a major update to the site, and here it is.
New look: we have polished our look to make the whole site more appealing but also easier to use.
Past events: From today, all the past events are available from the venues' individual pages; the whole 1000 of them, and counting.
New listings: the media and area lists have been enhanced to give more information on each event and venue. You can also sort them by different criteria, giving you a deeper level of control on what you are looking for. For example, you can sort the list of events taking place in Omotesando by schedule or by media.
And finally MyTAB: you may have noticed a new tab at the top of the window and some new icons next to event and venue names.
This is for you! MyTAB is a collection of simple tools that let you save, classify and track events and venues throughout the site. Save upcoming or current events to your My Events list and set Email Alert reminders. Mark events that you visited as Seen and store them with other events in your My Archives list for future reference. Or save your favourite venues to your My Venues list and set up Email Alert reminders for new shows. Register today! It's free!
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