Signal of the week

Packaging · 15 stories, +11 vs last week

Packaging: 15 stories in seven days, +11 on the week before.

Café Mori’s New Coffee Bags Trace Its Roots From Japan to Brazil The Dieline

Orumia – The Gold of the Earth Packaging of the World

Latest

Stack MagazinesSquinch magazine opens up architecture Magnus Rena, editor of Squinch magazine, speaks about the inspiration behind his architecture magazine that's not just for architects

11.06

Core77Kate Schroder's Illuminated LED "Chandeliearrings" These chandeliearrings are by Kate Schroeder , a Missouri-based ceramic artist and jewelrymaker. They contain LEDs powered by LR41 button batteries, which provide about 30 hours of life (though the…

11.06

Core77Redneck & Designey Ways to Stop Vandals from Smashing Your Mailbox I live in rural America, and can say that the 20th-century sport of "mailbox baseball" is still alive and well.

11.06

Core77A Table that Goes from Round to Square This transforming table is by Polish company Bauhausly . Its signature trick is that it goes from round to square: Beneath you can see the concealed hinges that make it work.

11.06

It's Nice ThatCaterina Bianchini: we can’t ask where the good designers are if we won’t help anyone become one It’s a tough time for people starting out in the creative industry right now. Together with Creative Lives in Progress we asked 28 people to predict what starting a creative career will look like…

11.06

Visual Atelier 8Fadi Alagi designs a climbing-inspired magnetic power bank Power Hold by Fadi Alagi reimagines portable charging through climbing Power Hold is a magnetic power bank concept developed by designer Fadi Alagi, drawing inspiration from the irregular forms and…

11.06

PRINTThe Daily Heller: The Vignellis Are Back Design Is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli , the 2012 documentary produced and directed by Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra, logged some international broadcasts and a two-year contract with Netflix.

11.06

The DielineCafé Mori’s New Coffee Bags Trace Its Roots From Japan to Brazil Agarcía redesigned Café Mori’s coffee pouches with a chunky red wordmark and color-coded tasting cards that trace the brand’s roots from Japan to Brazil.

11.06

The DielineElectric Blue Wax Caps Set Ticaret’s Garum Apart From Every Other Fish Sauce Designed by Herburg Weiland, Ticaret Fischsoße brings ancient garum into the modern pantry with fermented anchovy fish sauce, vintage sardine illustrations, electric blue waxlike caps and playful…

11.06

発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. More than eighty sources come in through the day, twenty of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo

One letter a week, starting soon.

Signal of the week

Packaging: 15 stories in seven days, +11 on the week before.

Café Mori’s New Coffee Bags Trace Its Roots From Japan to Brazil The Dieline

Orumia – The Gold of the Earth Packaging of the World

Latest

Stack MagazinesSquinch magazine opens up architecture Magnus Rena, editor of Squinch magazine, speaks about the inspiration behind his architecture magazine that's not just for architects

TypewolfDaylight

TypewolfHeart & Soil

TypewolfDirty Vine

Core77Kate Schroder's Illuminated LED "Chandeliearrings" These chandeliearrings are by Kate Schroeder , a Missouri-based ceramic artist and jewelrymaker. They contain LEDs powered by LR41 button batteries, which provide about 30 hours of life (though the…

Core77Redneck & Designey Ways to Stop Vandals from Smashing Your Mailbox I live in rural America, and can say that the 20th-century sport of "mailbox baseball" is still alive and well.

Core77A Table that Goes from Round to Square This transforming table is by Polish company Bauhausly . Its signature trick is that it goes from round to square: Beneath you can see the concealed hinges that make it work.

Visual Atelier 8Fadi Alagi designs a climbing-inspired magnetic power bank Power Hold by Fadi Alagi reimagines portable charging through climbing Power Hold is a magnetic power bank concept developed by designer Fadi Alagi, drawing inspiration from the irregular forms and…

PRINTThe Daily Heller: The Vignellis Are Back Design Is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli , the 2012 documentary produced and directed by Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra, logged some international broadcasts and a two-year contract with Netflix.

The DielineCafé Mori’s New Coffee Bags Trace Its Roots From Japan to Brazil Agarcía redesigned Café Mori’s coffee pouches with a chunky red wordmark and color-coded tasting cards that trace the brand’s roots from Japan to Brazil.

The DielineElectric Blue Wax Caps Set Ticaret’s Garum Apart From Every Other Fish Sauce Designed by Herburg Weiland, Ticaret Fischsoße brings ancient garum into the modern pantry with fermented anchovy fish sauce, vintage sardine illustrations, electric blue waxlike caps and playful…