
At the weekend after my friends and I had a very late brunch in Manchester I dragged them to the
rather fantastic Urbis building to check out an exhibition called ‘How Manga Took Over the World’, which, as you’d imagine, was all about how Japanese graphic design style has influenced us in the West. I know purists will probably be a bit annoyed they called it ‘Manga’ rather than ‘anime’, but I let it slide since they probably just wanted it to sound more accessible. I only persuaded two of my friends to join me inside (the rest
waited in the little park outside) despite it being a free exhibition, in fact, all the exhibitions at the Urbis are free. I don’t actually know much about anime, but I do know that I like the work of
Terratag,
Tado and
Jon Burgerman, and those guys were represented in abundance, as well as several other artists that I recognised but can’t remember off the top of my head. The exhibition isn’t actually that big, I got around it in about 20 minutes, though I was rushing and not reading the explanations since I didn’t like to keep my friends waiting indulging my own interests whilst they drank medicinal Starbucks to alleviate the effects of the previous nights drinking. If you’re in Manchester city centre for any reason over the next few months (the exhibition runs until September 27th) then I highly recommend checking it out.
Click on through for a load of pictures (mostly shot from the hip since I was unsure of the photo policy).
[click to continue…]
Springleap, the South African t-shirt design competition, has a great post on its blog written by their CEO Eric Edelstein, who is chronicling the the ups and downs that they’re facing throughout their formative months. The account is surprisingly candid, it isn’t all positive anecdotes, but it does make me like Springleap a lot more. I love this kind of stuff, this kind of openness from a company really endears me to them, and having this kind of an insight into the way they work is really interesting to me, and I’m sure it’ll be of interest to some of you guys as well.
Check it out here.

Remember that
hoodie with the stripes on that
I mentioned towards the end of April? Turns out they weren’t stripes, they were arrows, and now those arrows have found themselves one fresh new colours and styles.
Check them out in the Ucon shop.