Global Graphica

Traffic-signage of Japanese kanji painted on the street in Shibuya, in Tokyo, Japan.

This recent billboard for Calvin Klein in SoHo, in New York City, used a massive QR code as part of a marketing tactic. Viewers can get information by using their cellphone camera to scan the code.

Beautiful Louis Vuitton ad on the back cover of the Economist magazine. Three generations of globally-famous soccer superstars appear in the ad: From left to right, Pele (Brazil), Zinedine Zidane (France), and Diego Maradona (Argentina). The advertisement ran during the final weeks of the recent 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Each of these players has played in the tournament. That they are playing “foosball” (“fussball”?) is a brilliant touch.

We ordered dinner for delivery from a local Thai restaurant earlier this week. These bamboo chopsticks came with the food. We’ve been seeing these for years, but for some reason we only now paid attention to the cute panda graphic on the sleeve. We also noticed that these writing is Chinese (even though they came with Thai food).

The logo for Excelsior coffee — a Japanese chain of cafes a la Starbucks — on a mug and napkin in Shibuya, in Tokyo, Japan.

Intersection of narrow streets in the Sarugaku area between Shibuya and the Daikanyama neighborhood.

We were setting up our Saturday-morning “wake up music” playlist on iTunes and enjoying that first cup of coffee when we stumbled upon some cool Beck videos we haven’t seen for a while. The clips came on a DVD and as a download released with “The Information,” Beck’s 2006 album.

We were struck by some of the imagery used in these vids, especially the wardrobe and style of the various musicians and performers who appear in the video for the song of the same names as the album title.

In the still image below are three women dressed in what looks like an iconic fashion of 1960s Brazilian tropicalismo (or tropicalia) art movement.

Each in summer in Bryant Park, in New York City, the cable network HBO sponsors a series of outdoor film screenings. A giant movie screen is erected at the western end of the massive lawn in the park.

A beautiful, sprawling painting on the side of an apartment building near the NHK TV-broadcast studios complex in Shibuya, in Tokyo, Japan.

A glass branded with the logo of Belgian beer Vedett “Extra White” at a pub in Shibuya, in Tokyo, Japan. We heart this logo.

Fresh wheat-paste street art by the artist Primo on the Jay Maisel building on the Bowery, downtown New York City.

Beautiful living-room decor in a downtown New York City apartment: An large, rasterized image of some dudes playing “football” (soccer or “futebol”) on the beach at Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Table tennis on a summer Sunday in Bryant Park, New York City.

This guy looks like he may have had a little too much to drink the night before in Shibuya, in Tokyo, Japan.

Painting by classic New York graffiti artist Neckface in Tokyo.

Retro-design sticker for the legendary and short-lived 1970s-80s New York Cosmos soccer team. We stumbled across this in Petrosino Park in SoHo, NYC.

Stops signs at the end of a narrow lane in SoHo, NYC.

From our City Life series: New York ad agency interactive-creative peeps in their natural habitat. (Please refrain from feeding them anything but coffee.)

We were at the impeccably awesome cafe La Colombe Torrefaction in SoHo last week and one of the staff showed us a cool business card they picked up while on a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan. The card is for a restaurant in Naka-Meguro, one of our favortie Tokyo neighborhoods. One side of the card has a beautiful Japanese garden image and that crisp, classic kanji-kana text font, as well as calligraphy logotype for the restaurant. The other side has a map. F*ckin’ love it.