Lovin’ Tokyo

My business partner TIM is heading out to Japan today on a little business/holiday trip for the next 10 days, so I thought what better excuse to showcase some of my favorite Japanese designers and all things Japan (besides the insane street signs, which will be a post on its own):

PingMag - Great Japanese design mag, a must read if you want to keep up with the latest underground design culture in Japan.

Tokyo Cube - If you love Japan, you will love Tokyo Cube. It’s probably the only store outside of Japan where you can buy some of the coolest toys and tees straight from Tokyo.

Window Shopping In Tokyo - This is one of the neatest projects I’ve ever seen. Updated weekly, this website showcases some of the fascinating and shifting trends in Japanese high-end fashion.

Sexy Subaru - Not sure how many of you have seen these ad spots for Subaru - they air quite a bit in Canada. Check out their website to win a really neat Canon + Apple + Adobe prize pack for taking pics of Sumo wrestlers! Click HERE to view the ad on Youtube.

Toshiyuki Kuwabara - Real Raw Talent - check out his demo reel and his insane 3D animation portfolio.

Mitsuoka - The little car manufacturer that came up with the Orochi.

And finally, the Oscar winning Spirited Away - still one of my favorite animated movies. If you haven’t watched it yet - HERE’s a preview.

My New Favorite Font

I’m a font addict. New, old, sans, serif, script, pixel, symbol - you name it, I love it. I read blogs like I Love Typography and reference books like Font Book (no jokes)… so you can only imagine my excitement when I discovered this relatively unknown free font named Sketch Rockwell.

It’s a knock-off of the original Rockwell by Adobe (which btw is being used extensively on the new TIM sites), but the fact that is free just made it my new favorite font. You can expect to see a lot of this font pop up on the new TIM sites… I think it’ll compliment the existing Rockwell very well.

Some other free fonts I really like these days are Imitation (download HERE), Greg’s Other Hand (download HERE) and Romeral (leave a comment HERE to receive it via email).

And if you’re a real font nerd, you’ll definitely enjoy this little video by College Humor:

How To Promote a Brand Online

As most of you know, I’m the marketing guy behind Timothy Sykes and besides creating “genius” marketing images like this, my job also involves promoting the brand and getting the TIM word out there. Recently, in one of our weekly creative/marketing brainstorming sessions, we decided we needed a bit more exposure from other bloggers and web personalities. So, we made a list of some of our favorite bloggers and podcasters and decided to email them individually and get them to interview Tim. Because of my past relationship with a lot of the top bloggers, this task was relatively simple and within a day of contacting them, we had about 7 interviews lined up. You’ll see a lot of these audio and blog interviews come out in the next few days over at TIM.

So I’ve been thinking - what other techniques have I used in the past to promote a brand? And with that question, this blog post began. I’m going to list three of my favorite and proven techniques that really help get the traffic and recognition a blogger needs when he or she first starts out. So go grab that coffee and make yourself comfortable; here we go:

1. Linkbaiting - If you’ve never heard of this magical word before, let me be the first to introduce it to you. Head out to Smashing Magazine and check out THIS great post that teaches you everything you’ll ever need to know about linkbaiting. If you’re too lazy to read an entire post on it, essentially linkbaiting is the art of creating original content (could be videos, images, blogs, stories, rumors etc) that is so damn good that it will bait your readers to link to it from other websites (like facebook, myspace, digg etc). Want ideas on how to linkbait successfully? Read HERE.

2. Use Twitter and Twitterfeed - Twitter, in-spite of all the outages, is still one of the better online tools out there to spread your word (ofcourse, in 140 characters or less). Add friends, follow strangers and use Twitterfeed to automatically update Twitter with your blog posts. Read Problogger’s very detailed post HERE that highlights some of the advantages of Twitter.

3. Print T-Shirts - Yes, it works! Who doesn’t love good tees, especially when you have hotties like Lisa and Justine sporting them for you! I wear my PALLIAN DID IT tshirts everywhere. From the gym to grocery shopping to camping… it’s always PALLIAN DID IT. Before you know it - people are googling Pallian and they end up here. On that note, we’re producing about 100 TIMMAY tees for TIM - so if you’re a big Timothy Sykes fan, get in touch with me and I’ll reserve you one.

Hopefully these three techniques will give you a jump start with your brand. I’ll blog more about marketing and promoting 101 in the following weeks as we launch new projects. In the meantime, if you have a project that needs some immediate professional help, you know who to contact :)

Gone Camping!

With the heat in the mid-30s (celsius), my studio has become unbearable and inoperable. I need an escape and what better way than to go camping deep inside the mountains of the pacific north-west. The car is packed - the cameras are loaded - the beer is cold and we’re off! I’ll be back on Sunday and will have the photo gallery I promised ready for next week.

To keep you entertained while I’m gone, here’s an early weekender linkfest:

New York Times: A Map of Olympic Medals- a nifty interactive infographic that visually displays the number of medals that countries won in Beijing.

Visual Kidnapping!

Sweet Swedish Design Firm

If you’re in the NY area - check out Bobby’s Burger Palace.

Liveplace (watch it to believe it!):

TV Made Me Do It

I just bought a new car. And yes, the TV made me do it. Not the Internets like they usually do - but the TV. I’m not a TV watcher - but with the Olympics on and after watching Phelps get his 5th(!) gold - I saw an ad that made me want to buy a new car. Aptly titled “Progress is Beautiful“, the all new Audi A4 ad made me get off the couch and drive to the nearest dealer - which just happens to be the BMW Store. I walk in - and I saw it. Those feline eyes. Staring back at me.

A test drive and an haggling hour later - she was mine. Yes, I bought a BMW after watching an Audi ad that aired after watching Phelps swim in Bejing to win his 5th gold.

Not really sure what to do now - I rarely drive in Vancouver because I rarely am in Vancouver. But like the Audi ad said it - Progress is Beautiful.