After each Japan trip it usually takes about 3 weeks to discover what I actually bought during my usual 4 hour shopping frenzy on my last day. I discovered these lovely sets of wrapping paper that I bought in PARCO building. They are from a company called YONGADOU. Illustration from Japan is probably my favourite. It’s sheer simplicity makes me wish that I could draw freely like these people. The site is almost entirely in japanese, but with a bit of guesswork, you can find your way around.  http://www.yonagadou.com/

As we do so much work in Japan, alot of our projects are printed in Osaka by a lovely company called Koyo. Shige Nishino at Koyo has worked with us for 22 years. He was responsible for printing our lovely ‘ABOVE ALL ELSE’ photography book. Shige identified my love of Sake, and each time I see him, he gives me a different type of sake as a present. Also, everytime, he wraps the box himself in a lovely piece of fabric. This art of wrapping is called Furoshiki, an intricate way of using and reusing fabric as a wrapping paper substitute. I have tried so many times to be taught, but to no avail. Here is a video of how simple it looks…..

Preview images of the new Evian bottle designer edition, created by Paul Smith. The bottle will be available at the end of October globally. The project was managed by ABOUD CREATIVE.

Paul testing the purity of each bottle of Evian before capping them.

As we seem to accumulate so much graphic ephemera, we have decided to photograph as much stuff and put it in our ‘Nice Things’ section of our site. The milk bottle tops are a lovely collection of colourful graphics and prints.