Music with a-Jays One Earphones

I recently got a new set of a-Jays One earphones from mobile phone accessories. They do shipping to Japan too.

I've never known this brand Jays before, but apparently it's a Swedish earphone brand, and the earphones came with rather fancy (and unnecessarily heavy) packaging. They also have a fancy website showcasing all their pretty looking earphones. It is quite clear that they are a design-driven and well-branded company, but somehow I never came across them in any outlets before. Maybe they sell solely on the web? I don't really know. In any case, they make lovely sets of earphones and I'm rather happy with what I got.

The ones I got sound alright, nothing too superb as they are £25 earphones after all, but they're much better looking than the ones in the same price range.
I love their matt texture and the thick cables are meant to be tangle free. To be honest they do tangle a bit, but the untangling them is nothing compared to the pain I went through with my previous earphones; I'm definitely satisfied about that.
As a consequence, the cables are rather thick and they do stand out more than normal earphones around. Not that this matters much.

They are good for people like me, who are not too fussed about the sound of earphones, but would like to have decent ones within a cheap price range. Their great design is definitely a big bonus and make them attractive choice over all other competitors.
Also, they are for people who buy all their gadgets black, and cannot stand white earphones that Apple is sticking to. I like how Jays only make black products, as I pretty much only buy black anything.

I'm really good at breaking or losing earphones and I decided I won't invest too much money in them. I liked Nixon's earphones, but I broke them so quickly (not their fault but mine, just be fair), I never actually went back to them. As far as my limited knowledge of cheap and decent earphones go, I'm quite satisfied with Jays, Nixon and Sony. Nixon has the best looks, Jays is the most practical, and Sony the best price-for-quality (even super cheap ones sound decent and endurable).

とうとう新しいイヤフォンを、Mobile Funより手に入れました。日本への発送もしています。

a-Jays Oneというイヤフォンで、スウェーデンのJaysというブランドのもの。このブランドのこと聞いたことすらなかったのだけれど、主張しすぎず、デザインがしっかりしている印象。友人は「きしめん」と名付けていましたが、確かにきしめんなイヤフォンです。絡まりにくいのがいい感じ。マットな質感もグッド◎
値段の割には、お洒落です。今まで「お洒落かつ安い」イヤフォンはNixonの安いラインが好きだったのだけれど、Jaysも良い感じ。基本的になんでも黒しか買わないので、このブランドは黒しか売ってないというところも、勝手に共感が持てます。

---

So, what I have been listening with these new earphones?
Some super sexy songs.

For instance, I've been addicted to Sade's Smooth Operator. So seductive:
Sade、いいですね。この曲にすごくハマってます。セクシー。



This is my number one favorite song by Michael Jackson: Dirty Diana. The sexiest song by Jackson by far.
マイケル・ジャクソンの曲のなかでは“Dirty Diana”が一番好きです。そうです、わたしはセクシーな音楽が好きなんです。マイケルのなかで最もセクシーな曲ですよね、これ。



And a mixture of dance classics from early 00s. I wasn't so into house music back then, but they sound so nice to go back to now.

Take Dirty Vegas. I only started listening to them about a month ago, I don't think I even knew them (this reveals how little I know about music in general). But boy, their self-titled album Dirty Vegas from 2002 sounds still fresh to listen to in 2013. It's one of those albums that I love listening to as a whole and don't care too much about the details of individual tracks.
2000年代初頭のダンスミュージック、特にハウスを最近聴き始めていて、Dirty Vegasっていいなと思いました。
Dirty Vegas、Dirty Projectors、Dirty Southと、わたしの好きなミュージシャンはDirtyが多いな（しかもみんな別にdirtyじゃない）。



And the classic. Tiesto's Lethal Industry has been in my Spotify playlist for a while.
1999年リリース。確かにその時代の音なのだけれど、今聴いても新しい。飽きそうなのに、何度聴いても、本当に飽きないです。Tiestoマジック。



And finally some Adele. Her cover of Lovesong by the Cure.
It sounds so much like her other songs, it's hard to believe she didn't write this. This song then to Someone Like You is such an emotional part of her stunning album 21.
恋愛している人に染みるAdele。アルバムにも入っているカバー曲。最初、カバーだとはまったく気付かなかった。違和感なく、彼女の曲に聴こえます。歌詞がすごい。

Hello World! Processing with Handwritten Fonts

This post will be a record of some fun I've been having with Processing, using fonts from Family Typeface project.
Fort those who don't know what Processing is, it is:

Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks.

(via Wikipedia)

Processing.js uses JavaScript to allow Processing to be viewed on Web browsers. HOWEVER dealing with font files with Processing.js seems to get complicated (alsoko: Using custom fonts with processing.js) so I'm skipping that for now. I'm just gonna demonstrate it using screengrabs here. Any Processing.js font use tip is appreciated. The alsoko link above was a good read actually, tells useful things like it's better to use a .ttf files (of which I wasn't doing).

Any how, here are few directions that I've been trying:

---

1) Outputting using all fonts

When you have so many fonts, manually changing them is a pain in ass. Hence employing an automated process becomes greatly helpful.
Displaying “Hello!” in sequence of otf files turned out to be surprisingly easy.

What, on the other hand, turned out to be difficult was creating line breaks when each column reaches the height. I cheated by doing math myself and manually specifying the values for when to line break. That's sort of ridiculous and the code gets ugly as you can see bellow. Naturally, I need to find a better way of doing this, but this whole process of testing and figuring out things by myself is a part of the learning curve so it's all good (and fun).

---

2) Random font

Everytime you click the window, different font is being used:

It shades slowly so different typefaces overlap.
This code is pretty straight:

---

3) Type and random font

A variation from the idea above–when screen is being clicked, it changes the font. Difference is that instead of having a preset text, users can type in whatever text they want to display.
I used Andreas Schlegel's Control IP5 library for the textfield.
This has a lot of potential, me thinks.

---

For now things are basic but I'm hoping to build from those ideas. If this develops into some cool collision of analogue and digital, that would be super exciting.

プログラミングって数学ですねー。少なくともわたしのやろうとしている範囲の表現では、高度な数学を知っていることよりも、中学レベルの数学を「完璧」に出来るということが重要な気がします。なかなか自分の思ったようにいかないのが悔しいけれど、証明問題を解く感覚に似ていて楽しい。中高のとき、証明問題を解くの好きだったことを思い出します。
そういう意味では、本性的に向いている気もするし、細かい集中力に欠けていたりしてあまり向いていない気もしたり。どちらにせよ、もっとコードを使って表現出来るようになりたいです。

About Me and This Blog

I just updated About Shiho & Designscape page of this blog; explaining my personal profile and the purpose of this blog.
I'm trying to impose a clearer direction to this blog. We'll see how that goes.

自分のプロフィールとブログ紹介文を更新してみました。こちらのページ。
このブログに関して言えば、もうちょっと、システマティックに書いていければいいなと思っています。

Typography on Streets of Thailand

I found pretty much everything written in Thai appealing. I suppose it's partly because I cannot read them at all and thus they appear exotic, but still, the curly-ness and small circles that come at the end of each Thai characters definitely adds cute factor.
You can also see that a decent amount of design you see on the streets are purely typographic, i.e. no use of images, which I massively approve. Yes I am comparing it to Japan, where they believe so much of so many things need cute-faced characters. Blimey.

タイは、タイポグラフィがイケてる国でした。
こう見ると日本は、街中に「可愛いキャラクター」やら「イラスト」やら「写真」が多すぎる。もっと文字のみで勝負すればいいのにね。

Thai characters often but not always end with little circles and I wondered whether or not those circles have some sort of serif-like functionality. I tried to decipher it by reading Wikipedia page on Thai alphabet and on the Japanese page said that apart from letters ก and ธ, there are always small circles (dots). That being said, depending on typefaces, those circle are simplified. Also some typefaces mimics forms of latin alphabets.
Interesting.

タイ文字は可愛かった！「読めない」からこそ、かっこよく映るというのもあるとは思うのですが、ヒンデゥー語やアラビア語っぽくはあるものの、タイ語の方が丸っこくて可愛い。ちなみに、話言語も柔らかくて可愛い。

そんなタイ文字によく付いている小さな丸の意味を調べてみたところ、

ほとんどの文字（子音では「ก」と「ธ」を除く）に小さい丸があるのが特徴的であるが、字体によっては丸が省略されたり、ラテン文字に似せたデザインもある。44の子音字からなり、大文字・小文字の区別はない。

（Wikipediaより）
だそうです。ふーん。


It seems though when it is handwritten, those circles are omitted:
ちなみに、手書き文字になると、丸は書かないみたい。ふーん。セリフに近い感覚ですな。

I even found vehicle registration plates appealing. I mean, so many shapes and styles! The way numbers and letters are embossed are so cool. Some people even framed their plates, for decorative purpose I suppose, so clearly Thai people also think that registration plate is a cool aspect of the vehicle too, right?
ナンバープレートもかっこよさげ。

I don't know if it's a traditional Thai thing or a Chinese influence but there were frequent usage of color red and that certainly brightened up already sunny streets of Thailand. Everything Royal Family related seemed to have decorative gold too. Colorful and fun all the way.

It does make me feel that such rawness seen everywhere in Thailand is so strong and appealing, what the hell am I doing as a designer. When we think we are sophisticating things, are we at the same time making things boring? Designers tend to believe that we are solving external problem, but it is also true to say that at the end of the day, design is always a product of designers' egoism.

華僑の影響か、赤の使用が多い点も、赤を見ると牛のように興奮するわたしとしては好感でした。

タイのこういうラフな感じこそがカッコいいというのは、デザイナーとしては、結構考えさせられる点でもあります。常にそうだとは思いませんが、洗練していく過程で、世界をつまらなくしていることは多いと思います。デザインは「人のため」なんていいつつも、結局のところデザインなんぞ、デザイナーのエゴの産物であるという自覚は必要なのかもしれません。なんてことを、ぼんやりと考えてみたり。


Lastly, this is a cool balcony we found in Phi Phi Don:

How to Create A Font Using Your Own Handwriting

Back in December, I had an opportunity to speak at the Pecha Kucha Tokyo event #98. My thank you goes to Mr. Jean Snow for inviting me there.
What is Pecha Kucha? Here's extract from their website:

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images.
PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps -- just about anything, really -- in the PechaKucha 20x20 format.

I've been to few events in London and they are trailer-like-fun way of sitting through multiple presentations. Though regular events in Tokyo has a nice vibe and is a great place to socialize. Presenters as well as audience have a good balance of English and Japanese speakers, and that's a bit of a bonus for people like me.

Here's some photos from the night. Photography by amazing Michael Holmes:

And here's the presentation I did on my Family Typeface project:



For one thing I sound so nervous and now I am too embarrassed to watch that video above. I mean, really. I wanted to try this informal way of presenting (the spirit of Pecha Kucha i.e. chit chat) but my topic went all over the place and it seems I'm still too rookie to do a presentation without a good practice beforehand. And no, drinking before the presentation didn't really help. That being said, It was fun nonetheless, and I particularly enjoyed informal chit chat afterwards with audience.

What I ultimately wanted to say in the presentation (and I wasn't so clear there) was that I've been thinking lately about aim-less / client-less / design-for-sake-of-design creation is great for your soul. I love problem-solving aspect of graphic design, but I think graphic designers can also be motivated like how illustrators or photographers do their self-initiated work.

I think, by nature, graphic designers are problem seeker. I've been using the term problem seeker after hearing Christopher Simmons using it because it feels spot on. At the pecha kucha presentation I used terms like problem solver and consultant, but problem seeker seem expresses what I really wanted to say.

You have problem seeking side to graphic design on one hand, but it just is so much fun to do work for the sake of having fun. That was one of my biggest finding from this idea-driven brief-less project, making handwritten typefaces. My then tutor Joshua Trees at Central Saint Martins really encouraged me on this when I was in college.

In any case, since my pecha kucha was just an introductory one, and I don't think it was clear enough to make people create their own fonts, I'm going to go over how to create your own handwritten font here on this blog. I'm sure there are many other different ways to do this, but it doesn't hurt to know how I do it.

In many ways, it may seem as a cheat-way of creating a typeface. I hope I don't upset any typographers...

---

How to create font using your own handwriting

What you need

• a pen (bold marker is recommended)
• paper
• a scanner
• Adobe Illustrator 
• TypeTool
• a printer (optional) 

TypeTool is the software that people usually wouldn't have. It's a font-generating software. It's got some flaws, but generally speaking it is easy to use and do what it needs to do. It's probably not a cheap purchase if you want to create one font, but it's worth buying if you are planning to make several fonts in the future. As far as I know, this is as cheap as the font-generating software goes.

I use CS5 of Illustrator, but nothing too complicated is being done here; we are just vectorizing the scanned paper. I am assuming any version should be able to do it...?


Step 1) Write down letters

Write out all the letters you'd like to have.
I print out a form (I might make it available online if there's any need for this) to fill in because I've done it for quite many people. Though essentially, all you have to do is write out all the letters you want to have on a piece of paper.
Then scan the paper into your computer.
The scan quality doesn't matter so much, as long as the contrast between written letters and paper are clear. Format doesn't really matter too, as long as it can be read in Adobe Illustrator.

Just as a reference I give you my scan settings:

• resolution: 200dpi
• color mode: grayscale
• dimension: approx. 1600 × 2300
• file format: JPEG

Step 2) Vectorize letters on Adobe Illustrator 

Open Adobe Illustrator, drag and drop the scanned image directly onto a new artboard.
Make sure the image is selected, then click Live Trace. This prepares to vectorize your image.

Then, set Preset to Simple Trace. And click Expand.
The beauty of Simple Trace is not only it vectorizes the image but also it deletes any 'white bit'. So you are left with clean black-only vectors. You can change Threshold to the value you prefer too.
You can manually delete or modify any bits you don't fancy.

Step 3) Copy and paste each letter into TypeTool

Open TypeTool. Each box corresponds to specific letter. Double clicking the box pops Glyph window (shown at the right window of the image bellow). Copy (Ctrl + C / Cmd + C) each letter from Adobe Illustrator then paste (Ctrl + V / Cmd + V) on to each Glyph window in TypeTool.

Tip1: When you are copying in Illustrator, you probably have to double click the letter first as the whole vector is probably grouped.
Tip2: If you can't see any letter even when you paste it into TypeTool, Zoom out the window. It's something that TypeTool does: it doesn't paste at the center of the screen.

Step 4) Sort out tracking

Let's work on the spaces between each letters.
Go to Window > New Metrics Window.
Select Text Mode (the symbol that looks like I ), type out letters.
Select Metrics Mode (the symbol that looks like | M | ), you can select and by dragging and the each end of the letter, you can adjust the space that particular letter has.

Step 5) Name your font

Go to File > Font Info.
Here, you can name your font. This name is how appears as the name of font when one installs the font into the computer.

Step 6) Generate font

Go to File > Generate Font.
Here you can generate font that's ready to use. OTF is recommended, but you can also choose other font formats like TTF.

CONGRATULATIONS you just created a font using your own handwriting!

(The example above was done using Hyunho's handwriting. Check out his website here.)

---

I'm not a pro of TypeTool or designing typeface in general, but if you have any question by all means, drop me an email to info@shihoyokoyama.com I'll try my best to answer questions...

Growing Up

(Above two: in Macau, August 2011)

---

(Above two: in Bangkok, February 2013)

---

My taste in style hasn't changed; I still wear a lot of black clothes.
Though it does seem like a lot has changed in the last year and a half.
I don't necessary look older, but I do look more matured, don't you think?
In any case, I prefer myself now over all the other self I used to be.

面白い対比だったので、並べてみた。
丸くなったなあ。大人になるとは、こういうことかー。
この１年半、あっという間なようで、状況も環境も心境も、一変しました。

---

See photos of Shiho in Macau 2011 here.
Read my Thai trip 2013 here.

Thai Trip 2013

I went on holiday to Thailand for about 12 days. I've been to few places around Asia (Japan, S.Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Macau) but I might go as far as saying that this Thai trip was the best one out of all the Asian trips I've done. It's not a secret that I had an amazing travel partner but also it was probably the only place I felt that I'd like to be back and was felt most livable.

I arrived in Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur (using Air Asia) and from Bangkok, we went around Thailand clockwise on the map; Surat Thani, Krabi, Phi Phi island, Phuket and back to Bangkok. That roundtrip was not initially intended. To be precise, we couldn't get direct flight tickets to Phuket in the busy weekend, so it was a consequential thing but it was definitely worth seeing different parts of Thailand.

So what's the appeal? Why did I like it so much? Everywhere we went, we were greeted by laid-back people (of many were very friendly), amazing food, great weather, crazy night life, safe atmosphere and breathtaking beaches. It sounds like a perfect holiday right? It certainly was. When we thought things could possibly go wrong, for instance when we ran out of gasoline in middle of nowhere, people helped us and it was no hustle. Even in local areas, we had no problem communicating; that is we always had no problem getting the food we wanted.

We especially liked Phi Phi Island (Phi Phi Don) and stayed there for four nights. It was a place to relax. Drinking Piña Colada by the emerald green ocean was such a luxury.
At the same time, the craziness and chaos of Bangkok and Phuket were also inspiring. That energy, problem, stimulation, culture and collision of them all was definitely interesting to observe. When Seoul and Hong Kong felt just like Tokyo, Bangkok and Phuket seemed unique to my eyes. I love it in Tokyo, but after coming back from Thailand, the life and Tokyo did seem less colorful I must admit.


オーストラリアの前に、１１泊１２日（機内泊を入れると１２泊１３日）で、タイへ旅行に行ってきました。
今まで行ったアジア（日本、韓国、インドネシア、香港、マカオ）の中では、ぶっちぎりで一番良かったです。今までに行ったアジア（韓国、インドネシア、香港、マカオ）は現地の友達の家に泊まって、通訳＆ガイドも友達がしてくれたディーブなアジア旅行だったのに対し、今回のタイ旅行は、適当にふらふらしただけの上辺な旅行だったにも関わらず、相当楽しんできました。

バンコクにクアラルンプール経由（Air Asia）で入り、バンコクから時計回りで、飛行機でスラタニ、バスでクラビ、船でピピ島、船でプーケット、と周り、飛行機でバンコクに戻り、クアラルンプール経由で羽田に戻ってきました。そして、羽田着の４０時間後には、ケインズ経由でゴールドコーストに行くため、成田へ。１５日ほどの間に飛行機に８回乗るという、ジェットセッターな経験をしました。感想は、「意外と余裕」。

こんなにタイ各所を回る予定は一切なく、予定を立てずに行ったら、偶然こういう展開になってしまっただけなのですが、いろいろなタイの土地を見れて、逆に正解でした。ピピ島は特に気に入り、４泊しました。

ビーチも綺麗で、物価も安く、食べ物も美味しく、気候も良く、夜の街はクレイジー。でも、治安も良かったです。大抵のご飯を屋台で食べてましたが、お腹は一切壊しませんでした。ビーチもヨーロッパの方が、こそ泥が多く、常に気が抜けない雰囲気。タイの人は、多くの人が適当で、「だらだらやる気ない派」か「愛想がよく親切派」の２派があるものの、英語もよく通じて、過ごしやすかったです。

All photos above were taken by my iPhone5 camera.
I've edited them because I despise the width and height ratio of the default iPhone photo dimension. In any case, looking at them, I don't think I'll ever buy or carry compact digital camera ever again.

上の写真はすべてiPhone5のカメラで撮ったもの。
今後コンパクトデジタルカメラを買う、あるいは持ち歩くことはもう二度とないだろうなー。