Our favorite piece of graphica from the recent Honolulu series is this example of signage and graphic design at Honolulu International Airport. The standard internationally recognized iconography for Restroom, or Men's Room, has been dressed up with local Hawaiian flavor. Not only has a Polynesian decorative graphic been used in the treatment, but a classic aloha shirt and the Hawaiian word for men, "Kane," have been added. Very cool, if a little kitschy.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Found this surprisingly excellent up along the King Kamehameha Highway on the east side of Oahu, outside Honolulu. This was one of the best examples of graf we saw on the island.

Ivan Corsa Photo

A detail shot of the Waikiki Galleria Building office tower in Honolulu.

Ivan Corsa Photo

We love the style of this building. The Waikiki Galleria Building in Honolulu is an impressive piece of real estate. The architectural design is a fusion of Polynesia and post-modernism. The result of these combined influences is a glass office tower in the international style with a lattice structure or exosleleton reminiscent of Hawaiian or tropical aesthetic motifs.

Ivan Corsa Photo

We came across this abandoned barn along the the King Kamehameha Highway (or "The Kam," as locals say) outside the Honolulu suburbs on the eastern shore of Oahu. On the side of the barn is an old, faded mural of Hawaiian imagery. Even in its weathered condition, the mural retains a certain beauty. We can only imagine how vibrant its colors were when the painting was fresh and new a long time ago.

Ivan Corsa Photo

The famous Sheraton Royal Hawaiian hotel on Waikiki Beach, in Honolulu, is a classic, old-school luxury hotel. Its official logo is its venerable seal, pictured above. As design, it builds on the classic imagery and design conventions of both Western and Hawaiian nobility, and in doing suggests a degree of "class" and hence luxury in much the same way that many other products (tobacco packaging especially comes to mind) have used the same types of design motifs to lend a greater versimilitude of quality and appeal to social aspirations of target consumers.

Ivan Corsa Photo

The most famous hotel in Honolulu, or for that matter Hawaii and all the Pacific, the Sheraton Royal Hawaiian is certainly one of the world's most famous hotels and an icon of beach-resort luxury. Dubbed the Pink Palace of the Pacific for the striking color of its exterior, the Royal Hawaiian sits on one of the most expensive pieces of real estate on Oahu and is still a benchmark in the ever-crowded field of toney Waikiki accomodations, be they apartments, condos or beachfront rooms. The architecture itself appears to be an amalgam of Spanish colonial and art deco. The building complex and ground bear a resemblance to another well-known pink hotel -- the Beverly Hills Hotel, in Los Angeles.

Ivan Corsa Photo

On the edge of downtown Honolulu is this feeble attempt to write a tag. This unfinished graf is a rarity nonethless in a city that has relatively little graf and street art compared to most large urban cities on the mainland of America. If you look hard enough, however, you'll find graf of all kinds -- crappy, lame and hasty tags that are truly eyesores, as well as complex, innovative skillfully executed tags with depth and artistry. Look under overpasses or along the walls of the H1 Interstate that courses through central Honolulu for better ups.

Reiko Oishi Photo

This LV store in the Waikiki condos and resorts district, in Honolulu, has an achitectural design influenced by what looks like, at first glance, a fusion of Asian, Polynesian and Western styles.

Ivan Corsa Photo

This hotel and condo tower in the central Waikiki resort district, in Honolulu, looks like a classic piece of 1960's or 1970's beach-tourist architecture. The feature of this building is the curved UFO-like structure atop the skyscraper. Usually, this type of round, glass-sided architectural crown is a restaurant and bar that offers panoramic views.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Snapped this shot of a huge, long mural of a tiger stripe motif on the exterior of a high school east of downtown Honolulu. The design treatment fits well with the Oahu environment, and, we speculate, the mural echoes the design of the school's colors and athletic uniforms, especially since the the mural is adjacent to the sports field.

Reiko Oishi Photo