Helvetica The Movie

by SummerSeventySix

The idea of a film about a font really stimulates the part of my brain that likes left-field documentaries and clean typefaces. Gary Hustwit's Helvetica has its world premiere next week at SXSW in Austin, Texas, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of said typeface. It then goes on tour round the USA, taking in several universities and festivals, and seeks to explore not just the collection of letters you see in the poster, but the way that type affects our lives.

An Interview with Mihara Yasuhiro

by Ami Kealoha

For the past seven years Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro has been collaborating with Puma on a line of wildly inventive sneakers that has become known—with features like patterns, drips, fur, studs, stripes and metallics—for adding a true avant-garde edge to shoes.

The current Spring/Summer 2007 collection marks Mihara's fifth collection with Puma that includes limited edition re-issues of the MY-1 Peace, featuring a variation on stars and stripes, and MY-9 Love, a foral camo design. (Gold MY-24 pictured below.) Also new, a black satin-bound collectors book features full-bleed photos of the many models that Yasuhiro's designed for Puma, as well as work by fellow Japanese artists and an overview of and ad campaign. (See art and photography below.)

Last night, on the eve of his New York book launch, Cool Hunting sat down with Yasuhiro to talk about the essence of good design, working with Puma and the state of the sneaker.

Your designs are so unconventional, how do you balance innovation with good design?
When I work I try to reproduce ideas as faithfully as possible to the ideas in my mind.

To give you a specific example of good design, a pencil with an eraser has existed for a long time and will probably exist after I die. Maybe it's just superficial, but whoever designed the pencil had a good imagination. They thought about how maybe a child would lose an eraser. The design has two opposite actions in one, so it's not just a surface concern. To me, it represents something you have to keep in mind.

What I try to keep in mind is the pureness of design itself. If designers tried to redesign the pencil, Marc Jacobs or myself or Philippe Starck, it wouldn't change the essence of the design. So, to me it's important to keep the core of the idea of design.

So, what is the essence of a sneaker today? What do sneakers symbolize?
What it symbolizes to me, is that individuals have the opportunity to be more creative than before. For example, they can coordinate sneakers with what they wear, they can wear a suit with sneakers. People have more choices and more options for what they wear.

Before it was more limited. Though I'm relatively young, I used to feel uncomfortable wearing formal clothes with sneakers. Sneaker culture has made people more creative.

It seems that Puma as a brand has embraced that creativity, especially in collaborating with you. What's it like working with such a major brand?
They completely leave the work up to me. They don't suggest things. First I think of a theme, then I start drawing designs. The only thing they tell me is the deadline. Based on that deadline, I'll make a schedule.

After discussing the details in a video conference with Puma's London office, I bring the final designs to a production team in Taiwan. I try to solve problems with the design that come up in the the 3-D versions. Sometimes I ask them to make slight changes to the design, but we don't come up with negative statements. It's always, "it would be better if."

There are many challenges. I struggle every time, every collection. Sometimes it's almost impossible to put the details of the drawing in and the gaps between the 2-D version and the 3-D version become bigger. It takes an effort. Also, every time we try to introduce a new technique.

What is it you are trying to do to the sneaker?
My primary goal is to continue this kind of movement, continuing the trend of looking at the sneaker as fashion and I think i have succeeded. Before, you had to think of grips, cushions, spikes for soccer...and pursuing sports has come up with many technologies and now you can use them. The goal is to continue this since the sneaker is now accepted not just for sport but also for fashion.

We will keep having two legs. That fundamental thing won't change, but I would like to see it keep changing mentally.

The book Puma by Mihara Yasuhiro is available in North America, exclusively at the Puma Black store and Alife Rivington Club.

Also on Cool Hunting: Mihara Yasuhiro Sneakers

Nike Air Force 1 Pop-Update

by SummerSeventySix

We knew back in December that Nike was planning pop-up stores in London as part of the Air Force 1 25th anniversary. Following the installation at Dover Street Market, word has just reached us that London hip-hop outlet Deal Real will have its own pop-up inside London's Niketown. Reflecting the relationship between hip-hop and AF1s, the store will host a series of block party-type celebrations with DJ sessions on Thursday nights and turntablism workshops on Sundays. Relevant bits and bobs will be on sale too, like sneaker jewelry and limited-edition AF1 Croc and Anaconda shoes. The pop-up runs until mid-April.

Salem Al Fakir: This is Who I Am

by Ami Kealoha

One of the most exciting artists I've encountered lately, Salem Al Fakir (first mentioned on CH six months back in an article about upcoming Scandinavian talents) released his first full-length solo album, This is Who I Am, in January in Sweden. In the six weeks since its release, it has been on the top ten Swedish album charts and just this week went gold.

Raised in Sweden by his Syrian father and Swedish mother, Salem was an unmistakable child prodigy, touring Russia as a solo violinist at 12. Like other über-talents before him—Prince, Omar, D’angelo, Stevie Wonder—Salem now plays virtually every instrument. On This is Who I Am he plays them all in addition to writing, arranging, producing and mixing. His virtuosic abilities on the violin and keyboard instruments are most obvious. But he also holds things down nicely on the drums, bass, guitar, xylophone and who knows what else.

In contrast to his precociously adult arrangements, Salem sings imperfectly with an almost childlike quality. That said, I like his voice and it works. Being the consummate musician that he is, he must know it's his weakness and perhaps the title reflects that.

Though barely old enough to remember the 80s, one of Salem’s many gifts is an ability to craft sophisticated and catchy pop songs fusing the refined feel and rich arrangements of the 70s with the musical simplicity and catchiness of the 80s. His songs are playful and often unfashionably pretty and upbeat, with melodic keyboard solos and bright-eyed lyrics refreshingly free of irony. Short instrumental interludes between radio-friendly songs showcase his skill and deep musicality.

As the title suggests, This is Who I Am is a multifaceted collection of personal-feeling songs. The scope of styles he tackles is staggering, including rock, jazz, soul, folk, melodic pop, classical, blues, gospel and more with influences as diverse as Steely Dan, The Motown Sound, Stevie Wonder, TV theme songs, and Earth Wind and Fire.

Clearly Salem Al Fakir can do just about anything he wants musically. But unlike others before him who've had innate talent without taste and restraint (leading to numerous unlistenable self-indulgent “masterpieces”), Salem is thankfully blessed with both and we are all the better for it.

Due out 15 March 2007 in the U.S., pre-order the release from Amazon or, starting 16 March 2007, it will be available at hus a Scandinavian store in NYC.

by DJ Scribe

The Great Global Warming Swindle

by SummerSeventySix

I quite liked Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I say quite, because although his arguments were compelling, at the back of my mind, I knew I was still watching the practiced performance of a politician. Such a polished one, in fact, that many who would normally seek to counter such bold claims swallowed them whole. The fact that it's now won an Oscar and is being shown in schools means Gore's message has quickly become the received wisdom. But where's the debate?

The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was shown by Channel 4 in the U.K. on Thursday night, seeks to redress the balance. Don't be distracted by the pretty graphics (pictured above); the documentary pulls in some decent scientific opinion, to argue that the carbon footprint of humans may not be responsible for global warming after all. Martin Durkin may never have been the next President of the United States, and he also has his critics, but his documentary is perhaps more rigorous than Gore's film in scrutinizing the data to posit the argument that Earth may have warmed up even if we weren't here.