October 2007 - Jayhan Loves Design & Japan

Graffiti on the streets of KL

29 Oct 07

. Art & Design

Graffiti on the streets of Kuala Lumpur

Last week, when I went to Petaling Streets of Kuala Lumpur with my colleagues to have our lunch, on the way to the restaurant, we saw a lot of new graffiti appeared in many corners. It is really surprising and happy to see them appeared and some of them are meaningful, so I decided to grab my camera and capture some of them.

There are quite a lot of graffiti in streets of Kuala Lumpur actually, from stencil graffiti, throw ups to magnificent masterpieces. The stencils mainly describing the kids with messages like “Rape the wall, not the kids”, “Kidnap cars, not kid” … It reflected the current social issues that happened in Malaysia currently, because brutal rape and kidnap cases was happened frequently which is very sad.

Tutorial: How to create colorful stripes in Illustrator

26 Oct 07

. Tutorial

Tutorial: How to create colorful stripes in Illustrator

Probably you had seen these color stripes in many websites like Veerle’s blog and others, these stripes are beautiful elements for web design and even other applications like brochures and flyers. Maybe you think that have to create the color squares one by one and it could be a time consuming process, but here I will teach you the easy way.

First of all, you need to have Adobe Illustrator (recommended CS2 and above) installed on your computer. Launch it and open a new document. Then, head on to select the Rectangular Grid Tool, which is hiding under the Line Segment Tool group. Next, click on the blank canvas (not drag), a Rectangular Grid Tool Options windows appeared. Fill in the options shown in the picture below. Make sure the two options at the bottom of the Options are checked. Click “OK” and the skeleton Rectangular Grid is created.

Stunning Japanese Foliage Photoshop brushes

25 Oct 07

. Art & Design, Japan, Resources

Japanese Foliage brushes by DesignFruit

Probably you already know this, but I still want to take an opportunity to write about it. The post banner above is done by wonderful Japanese Foliage™ brushes brought to you by DesignFruit. In fact that I used this stunning sets of brushed for my several previous banner designs. The brushes are very high resolution and has a variety of different brushes to play with.

The creator, Jason Gaylor created these designs after being inspired by Japanese-style prints. He offered the Photoshop brushes and PNG free for download, however you need to purchase for the vector file. Feel free to use it for personal stuff, but be sure to read about the license agreements for non personal projects. Below is the example pictures uploaded by himself.

Yuna Ito – Urban Mermaid

24 Oct 07

. J-Pop, Japan, Lyrics

Yuna Ito - Urban Mermaid

Today, Yuna Ito is back with her latest single “Urban Mermaid” after the collaboration song “Mahaloha” with Micro of Def Tech. From the song name probably you can guess that this song is dedicated for the women with its cheer-up tune! The song is very nice and the promotional video is also very beautiful too. Yuna Ito looks gorgeous in it.

I’ve been a fan of Yuna Ito since her debut song “Endless Story”, she is a professional singer. As mentioned earlier, this is a song for the women, to support and cheer for them. So, in the PV for this song also featured a lot of women walking behind Yuna Ito and gather together in a room with Yuna Ito singing at the center, shown in the picture below.

Yui Aragaki debut songs preview!

22 Oct 07

. J-Pop, Japan

Yui Aragaki debut songs preview!

Can’t believe nowadays, many idols to start their singing career, for example Sawajiri Erika and now Yui Aragaki! But instead of debut single, she will release her debut album named “Sora” on December 5, 2007, which contains a total of ten songs including “heavenly days” and “Memories”. You can listen to the song preview right here!

Besides, she will have her first live performance at Nippon Budokan, in front of 10,000 fans. According to Tokyograph, Gakky is only the third artist (and first for female idol) to debut at the Nippon Budokan. She is preceded by TOKIO in 1994 and rock singer Michiyo in 1997. The song “heavenly days” is the insert song for movie Koizora (恋空), while “Memories” will be the theme song for movie Koisuru Madori (恋するマドリ). Yui Aragaki acted in both of these movies.

Both of the preview of the songs are soft ballad and emphasize on the sweet and soft voice of Yui Aragaki. I think the song suits her voice well and it actually sound not bad. You can listen to the preview of the song below.

What do you guys think of her songs? I think with her refreshing image and sunshine smiles, her debut will be a success! 😀

Oricon: Fukuyama & Nagasawa to wake you up in the morning.

21 Oct 07

. Japan

Fukuyama Masaharu & Nagasawa Masami to wake you up in the morning

What is the most important thing when you wake up from bed in a brand new day? Yes, it’s the refreshing start that kicks out with full of energy. So, Oricon conducted a research on men and women about “Which talent you wish to wake you up in the morning”, and the research result is, women’s no.1 spot is Fukuyama Masaharu while men’s no.1 choice is Nagasawa Masami.

Women’s choice: Fukuyama Masaharu
The comments for no.1 selection Fukuyama Masaharu are “His voice is wonderful”, “He has the sexy voice which I wish to hear!” , “With his good wake up voice, I’m able to spend the day with good feeling”. Well indeed, Fukuyama has great and sexy voice that any man wish to have. Try listen to his song or watch his latest drama Galileo, then you will know.

While taking the no.2 spot is Koike Teppei (member of WaT), who show his refreshing smiles and singing voice in “Morinaga Aloe Yogurt” Commercial. Comments from women are “I wish to hear that voice and smiles”, and “because it’s refreshing”. This shows that the Teppei’s image in that commercial has make an impact in women’s world.

Cute packaging: Tohato Caramel Corn

20 Oct 07

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Japan

cute packaging: Tohato Caramel Corn

Last tuesday after work, I head to one shopping center to look around for magazine and other stuff. Then when I walk pass Jusco supermarket, there held a small exhibition called “2007 Japan Autumn food festival” and I decided to take a look. Well, mostly were food packagings from some well known food maker like Meiji Seika, Lotte, Morinaga and much more. Then, I met this cute packaging, it’s Tohato’s Caramel Corn.

I already knew this packaging from MILK magazine as well as this website which I had covered it before during this “Creative packaging inspiration ~modern & vintage~“. But it’s my first time to see it in real life. The packaging is very cute and attractive! It has many variations of designs for different kinds of flavor. All of them will featured a character with cute expression, together with the food images either inside the character’s mouth or hanging somewhere in the packaging.

Are your plastic bottles safe to use?

18 Oct 07

. General

Are your plastic bottle save to use?

Many people particular Asian countries like Malaysia uses plastic bottles as water container for drinking. Well, that’s including me when I was a student. I used bottles like mineral water bottle or soft drink bottles, because it is cheap and convenient. But did you know that those bottles could harm your health?

If you take a look under the plastic bottles, there will have a small triangle sign with numbers and characters shown in the picture below. That is SPI resin identification coding system which was developed by the NA Society of the Plastics Industry in 1988. Those numbers are to separate the different kinds of plastics when process for recycling.

But did you know that those codes can be used to identify a plastic that whether is save to use as water container or vice versa?

Turn off your computer for a better tomorrow!

17 Oct 07

. General

Turn off your computer for a better tomorrow!

Admit it. Yes, global warming is the biggest and most discussed issue in the world this year, and it’s getting worst day to day. I can feel it, the temperature in Kuala Lumpur is getting hotter and hotter. Everyone should should not take it easy on global warming because, it is happening and everyone should play their own role to save the country and world.

For groups of people who works with desktop or laptops, there is a simple way to stop the global warming from getting worse, and that is to POWER DOWN your device when it is not in use or you are away for lunch for example. You can do this by turning off the monitor power or simply let your laptop in sleep mode. By this, you save 200 lbs of Carbon Dioxide, according to Stop Global Warming Organization.

Actually this is not just applied to computers, you can do this with other electrical appliances like televisions, radios etc. Turn them off when not in use. By this, you can also save your money from paying bigger sums of bills as well as saving the world. Two huge benefits in one action, why not doing this?

If you think this is not enough, you can check this Top 50 things to do to stop Global Warming ,Take Action!, and Easy ways to live greener to see what other steps to do to stop Global Warming.

This article is in conjunction with Blog Action Day campaign, hopefully is not a little too late to post this!

Create 3D extruded text in simple steps

15 Oct 07

. Art & Design, Tutorial

Create 3D extruded text in Illustrator

Actually I found this 3D extruded text effects on a trendy magazine, it looks interesting so I open the Adobe Illustrator CS2 to try it out. I found out that it’s simple to achieve this effect. You can use this technique to spruce up your logo designs so they really pop on your business cards and business promotional items etc. Because this involved 3D extrude effect, so you have to have at least version CS of Illustrator in order to proceed.

At first, type out the text with desired font. In here, I’m using rounded text. Then hit Ctrl+Shift+O to create the outline of the text.

Type out the text

Archive for October, 2007