Global Graphica

Wheat-paste street art poster of Native American in traditional garb and toting a modern, high-powered assault gun near the corner of Wooster and Grand streets in SoHo, in downtown Manhattan, NYC.

The beautiful display window at night of Artemide lamps and the lighting-design brand’s exceptionally minimalist winter holiday decor at its SoHo store in New York City.

Wheat-paste street art of a super cute toy robot posted on Crosby Street in SoHo, in downtown New York City.

There’s a new set of Argentina-themed Opening Ceremony flags and banners hanging in front of the influential clothing retailer’s original New York City store on Howard Street in SoHo. one of the banners say “Visita Argentina.”

Celebrated fashion and celebrity photographer Terry Richardson appears in a billboard ad for eyewear designer Sol Moscot modeling “The Terry” sunglasses and standing with his signature thumbs-up pose. The ad Is prominently displayed on a backlit billboard outside the Sol Moscot store at the corner of Delancey and Orchard streets in the Lower East Side of New York City. The ad was recently defaced with stickers and graffiti.

An expat British filmmaker friend of ours living in Berlin has an intriguing collection of furniture in his apartment, in the Prenzlauer-Berg neighborhood of the German capital. The awesomest item of decor and furnishing is the wall shelf that doubles as a light made from the letters “r” and “t” from the illuminated logo signage for a Smart car dealership. Fookin’ rad.

“Delete More, Care Less” poster on Crosby Street in SoHo, in New York.

Picture of the eco-friendly and beautifully designed Casa Camper hotel in Berlin at night. The room numbers are displayed on the windows of each unit. The hotel has another location in Barcelona, Spain, and was developed by the Spanish shoe company Camper. The hotel aesthetic and ethos are aligned with the Camper brand.

Image de l’éco-amical et magnifiquement conçu hôtel Casa Camper à Berlin dans la nuit. Les numéros de pièce sont affichés sur les vitres de chaque unité. L’hôtel a un autre endroit à Barcelone, en Espagne, et a été développé par la société espagnole de chaussures Camper. L’esthétique et l’éthique hôtel sont alignés avec la marque Camper.

夜にベルリンで環境に優しく、美しくデザインされたホテルカーサカンペールの写真。部屋番号は、各ユニットの窓に表示されます。ホテルは、バルセロナ、スペインの別の場所を持っており、スペインの靴の会社のキャンピングカーによって開発されました。ホテルの美学と精神は、カンペールのブランドに整列している。

Local New York City classical music radio station WQXR has taken a cue from and cleverly appropriated street-art superstar artist Shepard Fairey’s Obey / Giant Has a Posse imagery for an ad campaign promoting Beethoven Awareness Month.

Wheat-paste street art of Frankenstein wearing hipster plastic blinds sunglasses (a la Kanye West in 2008) at the corner of Bowery and Spring streets in downtown Manhattan.

Some pix from the second 2011 Tokyo Design Festa held at the Big Sight in Odaiba, in Tokyo, Japan. The event is kind of like an art fair for students and is mostly a hit or miss affair with a lot of forgettable artworks, but it is a great outlet for ambitious young artists and a forum for surveying student work. One of our Tokyo peeps, Laura Ohno, went and shared the pix below with us. (Thanks, Laura!)

Photos in post copyright Laura Ohno. All rights reserved.

Recent work by street art collective known as the London Police. This small work of street art is not much to get excited about, but it’s good to see TLP active and present in NYC. This work can be found at the corner of Delancey and Christie streets, near the Bowery Ballroom.

Fresh art work by Bast on Crosby Street in SoHo. It’s the first new work by the artist we’ve seen in the neighborhood in a long, long time. Where have you been, Bast?

Degraded street art and Cortelyou sticker mashup on the base of a lamp post in SoHo, in New York City.

Knocked down Stop Sign (and One Way sign) at the corner of Crosby and Prince streets in SoHo, in New York City. When photographed with a flash, the reflective material of the sign brightly pops visually in stark contrast to the surroundings. Love that effect.

The return of Matt Siren, but with a skull stencil image vastly different from his iconic girl image.

The blue-light wall with its surface of bumps at the recently opened second outpost of the Pan American, a pan-Latin style restaurant on Mott Street in Nolita, in downtown Manhattan.

The original AT&T Building in TriBeCa in downtown Manhattan. Ironically AT&T cell phone coverage in the blocks surrounding the building, especially to the immediate east and south of the building is terrible.

The recently opened Uniqlo “Global Flagship” store on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan’s prime stretch of shopping is a massive statement by the giant Japanese retail clothing brand. (See pix below.)

To walk through the store can be a vertigo-inducing experience for some. The cavernous and, in some areas, maze-like warrens of clothes racks and shelves are mediated by large video panels of various sizes and alignments, neon and fluorescent lights playing off layers and walls of glass, and the clothing sections broken up by open areas with massive stairs dipping between deep floors at every turn in the multi-colored, multi-floor space. It’s fun, but can feel overwhelming.

At the front of the store, twin banks of elevators based in the display windows along Fifth Avenue are filled with mannequins and arrays of flashing neon rods that ride up and down the vertical face of the store.

Uniqlo is a case study in how a once ho-hum, intelligently no-nonsense and popular discount clothing chain can up its game in a big way internationally with great design, product, pop-culture savvy and “cool Japan” imagery and then export back the cachet of the successfully enhanced, hipster-certified brand back into its own country of origin, Japan. And, of course, then, eventually, how it can further leverage the new and improved domestic brand cachet in an even bigger way into the global space in places like Shanghai, China. (We visited the Shanghai flagship store on its opening day in 2010, and while it’s epic and nice, it’s tamer than 5th Ave.)

The global flagship store is a cacophony of visual noise and an interior retail design concept and brand experience on the grandest commercial scale available in Manhattan. We like the Uniqlo store in SoHo better. It was the first United States flagship, though not the first store in the US, and not the first in the city. But the Fifth Ave. Uniqlo is worth a visit to see the design aesthetic firsthand, sit in the lounge area, do some people watching, and buy some of those great socks they make and sell at three-pair for $12.00.

The beautiful gallery and work space at Geiss, formerly the home of Deitch Projects art gallery on Grand Street in SoHo, in downtown New York City.