Street graphics have become the visual language of cities. Signs and symbols instruct, inform, portray concerns, and express aspirations. Culturally specific, they are also increasingly universal, always creative, and always fun. Tokyo's vibrant street graphics combine ancient tradition, twentieth-century mass production, and a twenty-first-century urban vision that is uniquely Japanese. A colorful clash of imagery renders the familiar strange and the strange bizarre. Cartoon characters can signify the police or pornography. Fashion statements are derived from diverse sources—ancient Egypt or even a hospital operating room. Slot machines vend erotica; pets and cops are robots; tempting dishes of sushi turn out to be inedible plastic representations. Ridley Scott's futuristic film Blade Runner was inspired by Tokyo's neon nightscape, where a fashionable department store doubles as a giant digital TV screen featuring lifesize dinosaurs in Godzilla's hometown. Barry Dawson's photographic vision of Tokyo forms a creative reference for students and designers, as well as an imaginative, offbeat pictorial guide for visitors and armchair travelers.

A new guide to Tokyo street style, documenting looks from Japan and beyond, featuring endless inspiration, tips, and tricks to put together that killer look. A veteran of Fruits magazine, Rei Shito is a pioneer of the Harajuku street-style scene. Known for her unique ability to capture the unexpected, Rei's collection of street snaps offers a local girl's look into Tokyo's inimitable style--one that is honest, descriptive, and always super cool. Unlike most street-fashion compendiums, entire chapters are tutorials on achieving your own signature style. Illustrated and with step-by-step instructions, Rei unlocks the secret to pairing bold graphics, patterns, and metallics with everyday staples to create ensembles that are at once fearless and effortless. Interview from fashion insiders including Chitose Abe, Motofumi "Poggy" Kogi, and Scott Schuman highlights the influence that Tokyo street style continues to have on fashion, while dozens of tips and tricks offer readers endless inspiration on how to master pattern, texture, and color to create the perfect outfit the Tokyo way. This collection of diverse, urban style inspirations is a necessity for any fashion lover's bookshelf.

Subverted signs, spontaneous drawings, powerful monolithic symbols, and curious characters represent a worldwide outdoor gallery of free contemporary art. Graffiti art is constantly changing. Fresh coats of paint and newly pasted posters appear overnight in cities across the world. New artists, new ideas, and new tactics displace faded images in a perpetual process of renewal and metamorphosis. From Los Angeles to Barcelona, Stockholm to Tokyo, Melbourne to Milan, wall spaces are a breeding ground for graphic and typographic forms as artists unleash their daily creations. Current graffiti art is reflective of the world around it. Using new materials and techniques, its innovators are creating a language of forms and images infused with contemporary graphic design and illustration. Fluent in branding and graphic imagery, they have been replacing tags with more personal logos and shifting from typographic to iconographic forms of communication. Street Logos is a worldwide celebration of these new developments in twenty-first-century graffiti, an essential sourcebook for all art and design professionals, and a delight to everyone excited by the vitality of the street.

A catalog of an exhibition that surveys the history of international graffiti and street art.

This indispensable one-volume narrative examines the history, culture, environment, economy, politics, future, and more of the city of Tokyo, Japan's political and cultural capital. Tokyo has endured and moved beyond horrible disasters in the 20th century, first an earthquake in 1923 and later the events that unfolded during World War II, to grow into one of the most populated cities in the world. This volume examines Tokyo's history, politics, culture, and more. Narrative chapters cover a wide breadth of topics, including Tokyo's location and geography, peoples, history, politics, economy, environmental issues and sustainability initiatives, local crime and violence, security issues, natural hazards and emergency management, culture and lifestyle, pop culture, and the future. Inset boxes entitled "Life in the City" include interviews with those who have lived in Tokyo as well as those who have traveled to the city, allowing readers to get a better idea of what daily life is like in this global megacity. A chronology, sidebars, and bibliography complete the text. The perfect one-stop resource for high school and undergraduate students, this volume is also suited to general readers interested in learning more about Tokyo and its role as a global city.

DIVAn authoritative guide to the most significant artists, schools, and styles of street art and graffiti around the world/div