Tetsuya Uenobe is a Japanese designer who creates shoes as ‘wearable art’. He learned to make shoes by hand whilst attending the London College of Fashion.

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Japanese designers Keiichi Muramatsu and Noriko Seki founded the Tokyo-based fashion label, Everlasting Sprout, in 2005, based on their mutual interest in knit design. Each intricate creation in their Spring/Summer 2009 range took up to a week for them to construct.

Japan’s graphic design master Shigeo Fukuda passed away last month. Fukuda created thousands of optical illusion posters — and some installations — that are so simple, clever and memorable and kept wowing the world for nearly fifty years. Rest in peace.

We have featured Tokyo Flash watches before but they recently launched a new generation of time keepers, which are innovative and ahead of its time [pun intended]. The first new watch is the Rogue, which has a vivid green LED light guide that presents the time through a labyrinth of connecting LCD blocks. The outer ring of small dots represents minutes, with every fifth dot being slightly smaller to distinguish five minute groups. The other new watch is the Pimp Star Performer, a beautiful concept based around the twin pursuits of drinking martinis and making money! With its solid stainless material and glass made out of mineral crystal with mirrored digits, this really is a ‘pimp’ watch.

Ok, now this is what I call a cap. It’s bright, it’s bold and it’s sassy. And that peak just soars majestically across the fringe. Heck, I kinda feel I could have a decent conversation with it — about the baseball or the price of wood.

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Based in Osaka, Japan, Shige Tomo is a graphic designer and illustrator who lends his formidable talents to creating deceivingly sweet looking, doll-like creatures, whose malicious stares are quite at odds with their sugary features. Aside from conjuring up an impressive portfolio filled to the brim with these effortless evils, Tomo also has a wonderful collection of dolls and other products available, which bring his saccharine creations to life. Lovely in their simplicity, yet malevolent in their intent, you have to wonder if Tomo had nightmares about dolls when he was a child.

Nagi Noda is one busy lady. Although a native of Tokyo, she spent five years in America and has worked up an impressive body of work. In addition to the rad hair hats an MFA would drool over, she’s directed videos for the Scissor Sisters and done work for both Laforet and Nike, amongst others. She also has ties to Jack White and Mark Ryden, who collaborates with her for a fashion line called Broken Label. All the while she still managed to work in a Cannes Festival award in there too.