PIECE of PEACE Tokyo

i am flattered and honored to have been invited to participate in a lego sponsored art event to raise money and awareness for unesco called "piece of peace tokyo" which opens on february 1st 2008.

many of the artists have recreated world heritage sites in lego and others will be creating 2-D work on the themes of the show or world peace.

my piece is titled: Peace Memorial for Great Buildings Lost and the following is the short message statement i wrote:

"architecture is perhaps the most human of arts and technology as it developed along side the development of permanent settlements after the advent of agriculture. I believe that more than anything, people take pride in and identify most strongly with monumental buildings as they represent the combined talents and energy of a community. Therefore, it saddens me most when great buildings and monuments are destroyed by war and unrest – and indeed, the ruins of many of these structures endure to this day as a reminder of the horror of war – silent sentinels for peace."

here is a link for the details, unfortunately only in japanese. i will see if the show will be traveling or not and update you here. official site is here, but not much info there as of this writing.

So, if you happen to be in tokyo the first week of february – check out the parco art gallery in shibuya and let me know how you enjoyed the show!

HK Press Milk and Milk-X

just sharing some december 07 press from my trip to hong kong in november 2007. great coverage but does anyone proof read in hong kong? they spelled my name: marrhew waldman throughout one of the articles! that said, i love these 2 magazines, they cover art, trends, urban culture and high fashion – each issue is full of cool stuff. also, this particular issue of milk-x has a lenticular cover [otherwise known as winky-dink technology]! i look pretty cute on the bed in my room at the JIA hotel as well.

i'm including a pic of the milk-x limited edition we created for the magazine. they took a better foto than we did.

thanks to allan of nooka hong kong for always arranging the best exposure for me.

a few of my favorite things

i am finding that my blog is a great way for me to record information to use for press/PR that i never seem to get down on paper in an organized fashion. there are some interview question that get asked over and over, yet i blank out whenever asked, so i think i'll write 3 of them down here:

what is your guilty pleasure:
junk cereals! i love lucky charms and reeses peanut butter cereal, but i don't eat them for breakfast – it's my late night snack that probably contributes most to my mid-section. my favorite cereal growing up was the freakies, and i used to have all the prizes. i would LOVE to design a breakfast cereal!

what is your favorite store:
my favorite store is probably the original don quixote discount store in okubo [tokyo japan]. it's open 24 hours which is great when you have jetlag. it used to actually be a great place to find bargains, but now the prices are pretty much the same as other stores selling the same crap, but having a one-stop shop for toothpaste, sake, shochu, japanese junk food, teas and last seasons' toys in a 24 hour setting is pretty cool [i don't like crowds and only shop when a place is not too busy. this is why i rarely shop in NYC]. #2 would have to be the MUJI flagship in Yurakucho Tokyo where you walk trough [and BUY] a MUJI pre-fab house, buy everything in their catalog AND eat organic food in their restaurant – total copy of the ikea concept but more chic, minimal and less exhausting.

what is your favorite brand:
fashion: prada and miu miu. everything other than their websites [what is it with italian companies and crappy websites?] are expressions of perfection and nooismo™. this doesn't mean you'll find me wearing much of either as i'm pretty much a t-shirt and jeans kinda guy. i also love and respect what yohji yamamoto does with Y-3 and what mihara does with puma [now this is stuff i buy a lot of for my feet].

NOTE: Prada website IS great but must of been down when I wrote the above. I still find many european brands have less than user friendly websites.

photo is the kinoie prefab house from muji japan

COTN™ 2

the response from a post on gizmodo has been huge...lots of traffic to this blog and the nooka website. somehow they credited me as mark waldman which i hope they have corrected. thanks GIZMODO! the COTN™ CAMO models will be available for delivery in a few weeks [no later than mid-february] but you can pre-order here. (i know it says "buy now" – working on fixing the site as i type!) will also be available in your local nooka retailers in february.

pattern © 2007-2008 Nooka Inc., All Rights Reserved.

musings on NOOISMO™

i am often asked to define the nooka customer in terms of demographics, which is difficult for me as the nooka customer spans many different age, economic, and cultural groups. i am able to describe one part of their personality to which i coined the term "nooismo™" – a person who appreciates new developments in technology, art, design and culture. people who exhibit signs of nooismo are sometimes the trend-setters themselves, well-versed in the visual language of context in pop culture and able to see when something truly is 'noo' and fresh.

for example: courreges was a ground breaking fashion designer in the 1960s. he was one of the first to pioneer the use of industrial synthetics in fashion and his looks presented a utopian vision of the future. he is one of the grandfathers of 'nooismo'. the iphone is also a product that has nooismo appeal [and it would have even more without ATT!].

music is a good place to find an emotional connection to nooismo. at the moment, the label modular records is the finest example of a music company that successfully presents noo and fun bands [fun is an important component of nooismo]. if you're interested in bands in the past who exhibited the ultimate in nooismo for their time, i recommend this blog by Dave Renard – it's amazing, he digs up long forgotten and hidden gems.

other random past nooismos: inline skates were hailed as an innovation over traditional roller skates, but actually, their design predates the truck design that was popular for most of the 20th century. luckily someone found a way to reinvigorate their nooismo in the 1980s! fuel cell technology is another old innovation [invented in the 1800s] that will hopefully be noo again big time!

the nooka nooka corporate mascot

Many of you may know Nooka from press and shops on planet earth, but did you know that the brand is developing quite a following in higher dimensions as well? Drawn to Nooka by the similar sound of their name, the Nookas, extra-dimensional beings, made themselves known to me. After top-secret negotiations, they agreed to let Nooka base a mascot on their likeness!

Produced in a limited edition of 333 pieces X 3 colors in luxurious vinyl, the Nooka Nooka will initially only be available to stores for display [as the ‘horns’ of the Nooka Nooka” are perfectly sized to display nooka watches]. Any leftovers will be available for sale signed by yours truly for hundreds of dollars each. Available in April 2008.

photo is a sneak preview...more to come closer to the release.

XEROX Rebranding WTF?

xerox has demonstrated that they know absolutely nothing about branding and marketing by undertaking a redesign of their corporate identity [logo and graphic design style for the non-design set]. i guess i'm one of the few identity specialists that would turn away such business, but their previous logo and identity was perfectly fine -- iconic and well recognized. if they have a problem with the consumer, it's in the product or the advertising/marketing-- not the logo.

companies that really understand branding [like apple computers, and nooka] know that branding excels by maintaining 3 main principals: 1. consistent presentation [through the application of a kick-ass corporate identity program], 2. consistent messages, and 3. consistent high quality products that embody the first 2 principals. for a company like xerox, in terms of priority, steps 3 and 2 are the issue.

what xerox fails to grasp is that a new logo will not accomplish anything other than causing blog posts like this to pop up.

if any executives there want to hire my brand studio, berrymatch, to fix the mess, have them contact me. i would suggest a revitalization of the previous brand standards with a focus on language and message and deliver a new look-and-feel without replacing the logo [why throw out the only positive brand asset you have?] concurrent to that, i would put together a world-class team to redesign their products to launch WITH the new look-and-feel, not before.

NOOKA MYOOZIK

i can't believe i'm being so consistent with my blog, but i guess it's thanks to google analytics -- seeing what pages are getting viewed after press items and other blog mentions is actually quite engrossing. i could write only about nooka stuff [unfortunately, a lot of the stuff is now on a PR calendar --im told when i can blog about product releases:)] but that would give you guys a very narrow view of the the matthew waldman nooka experience!

aside from fine design, i am actually a bit of a music geek. and much like nooka, my musical tastes are not mainstream. music is always playing in my design studio, and luckily, we all tend to have similar tastes. i also like to think that nooka is the watch of the alternative/electronic music scene as we do see them popping up in photos of musicians at festivals [jenny wilson, mika, kanye west and many others!]. if you are a musician who owns a nooka, please send us a little bio with a photo of you wearing the nooka and we can post it in our press section online or just here.

what music got heavy rotation at the nooka studio in 2007?
our ill wills by the shout out louds,
brooklyn's own: glass candy,
smoke by white williams,
FABRICLIVE.36 by James Murphy and Pat Mahoney,
Leave Them All Behind 2 by MODULAR records,
sarolta zalatnay's greatest hits,
BIG SCIENCE by Laurie Anderson.

i'm too lazy to post links for all of the above, but if you don't own them, you do need them right now!

noo years predictions

happy new year everybody! i spent new years throwing a party in my apartment for friends but strangely, no one took any photographs! here are some of my loose predictions for 2008.

google phone: february 24, 2008 the google phone will be announced, but not a "techno-marvel" like the iphone , but rather a return to an old business model like broadcast television and radio -- totally free cell phone service supported by their already robust ad sales machine. this will revitalize the technology hardware sector as consumers, free from monthly bills, spend more and more on fashion driven handsets. savvy phone makers will hire nooka to develop high end models and interface innovations.

michael bloomberg will enter the presidential race by the end of january putting an articulate focus on issues, not party politics. it's a long shot, but i predict the following tickets: bloomberg/obama on both democrat and independent tickets, and huckabee/clinton on republican.

nooka zircs finally arrive in stores in spring causing a social trend and renewed interest in science fiction fashion. this catapults designer matthew waldman onto the scene as both a talk show host and action hero movie star.

image: new york sky # 70. © 2007 matthew waldman, all rights reserved.