Blog

From the outside, the Taito Designers Village building, located on a side street in a bustling part of Tokyo, appears to be a place for young children. Walking through the hallways of this former elementary school, nobody would guess that it houses the offices of a dozen or so young design entrepreneurs.

I’ve always enjoyed creating things, and I’m a very visual thinker. This led me into design, which led me into magazines. Initially, I worked on the prepress side before the design side. This was in the mid-1990s when we were still taping slides on to drum scanners, processing and stripping film, and making match prints for color proofing by hand to get to the final printed magazine.

I’ve got a sports background. I was involved in a French judo team for seven years when I was a student, and I have a bachelor’s degree in performance management. After retiring from judo and moving to Australia in 2007, I worked in the luxury retail industry in B2C and B2B sales. That’s where I learned English.

Web designers rely heavily on design software to create user interfaces (UIs), and Adobe Photoshop has long been the industry standard. However, the venerable application has numerous flaws and limitations when it comes to UI design—a lack of interactive functionality to name a big one.

Social media is no longer just a place where people go to have fun, hang out with friends or let them know what they are up to. Since helping an international airline establish its social media presence in Japan five years ago, Custom Media has seen a rapid rise in firms, brands, as well as government and non-government institutions reach out to get professional help with their social networking channels.

When I was young, I was interested in creating something online that everyone could access without the boundaries of their computer. When you write software, it is for an operating system such as Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android. But with a website, anyone can access it as long as they have a browser. I started doing that in high school, using Microsoft FrontPage. This was an application like Microsoft Word that could publish content as a website. You just added backgrounds and text.

My background is varied. Although I’m now working in a creative environment, I started my career in construction. I was about 20 years old when I got a job working in computers for an advertising agency, and that’s where I was introduced to design.

Using video as a promotional tool has many advantages: It’s easy to consume, impactful, and has a high conversion rate. That’s why it’s considered one of the top three tools for social media marketing. You’d be hard-pressed not to stumble across a video while scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

We are exposed to thousands of advertisements per day, often without realizing it. Out of those, we may only remember a handful. Those that do make it through often do so in disguise.

I studied philosophy at King’s College London. People don’t always understand the value of it, but it’s all about thinking. It’s about logic, reasoning, and—to a certain degree—empathy because it’s about considering other people’s views; and good philosophy is often about treating other philosophical views or systems with respect.

Last year was another very rewarding 12 months for the busy Custom Media team, and we could not have done it without you, our clients. We’ve greatly expanded our diverse portfolio and have had the pleasure of managing some incredible projects.

My childhood and education were strongly connected to the arts, so you might say I grew up in the art world. My parents worked in art-related occupations, and I attended art-focused schools in the United States. I never imagined that someday I would work in sales.

This year there has seen a strong focus on video content across social media, with many platforms introducing new ways for companies to communicate and reach out to their audience by taking advantage of video, and more recently live video.

Jonathan Berglund, from Sweden, interned at Custom Media from August to September 2016, working closely with the Business Development team. Here he shares his thoughts on the intern experience at Custom Media.

I came into marketing in a really roundabout kind of way. I studied Japanese at Leeds University, and I really liked the international relations classes. In particular, I really liked the topic of soft power.

In the digital age, people have become accustomed to a broader color range. Camera technology, screen resolution, processor speeds, and bandwidth continue to improve. Here are five ways digital technology influences print.

As different methods of communication surface every year, it almost seems as though linear traditional methods of advertising will join cave paintings on the list of ancient ways to interact.

After you’ve been away from Japan for a long time—like me—when you come back you discover the place in a certain way, and you find you’re not so knowledgeable about it. That happened to me so now I’m interested in introducing the beauty of local Japan to an overseas marketplace and people in Japan who stay just three or four years.

For a writer, a blank page is a canvas upon which anything can come to life. For a musician, a song is a message to their audience. And for an entrepreneur, the business world is a playground filled with potential.

My major at college was international studies. After graduation, I got my first job as a secretary at a US Army base. But I was solely using my native language skills so, seeking an international experience, I returned to Chiba Prefecture, where I worked in a number of administration roles.

Today, the words tablet, notebook, and pad have lost their association with paper. In response to the shift towards digital, the printing industry has made rapid advances, with machines now able to offer greater color ranges and faster speeds than before.

My bachelor’s degree from Chuo University is in Policy Studies. It offers a very broad approach, so I studied a range of subjects including economics, politics, foreign relations, the environment, and culture. The reason for that is to allow students to gain the perspective required for the 21st century. It was fascinating.

Social media is a great tool for building brand awareness, driving traffic to your website and, if used appropriately, generating leads. However, it’s the last point with which brands tend to have the most trouble.

In May 2016, Instagram released a re-design and new look. Its retro camera icon, with which users had quickly and easily identified for years, was flattened, and a bright rainbow gradient added behind it. Its colorful and oversimplified elements came as quite a surprise.

Ask someone about Twitter, and they might say that it’s just people telling you what they had for lunch. While this may have been true in 2008, it’s no longer the case. If this idea has been limiting the role of social media in your marketing strategy, it’s time to rethink.

We are entering an exciting phase with the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT). As sensors continue to be embedded in everything from cars to wristwatches, those connected devices and wearable technology provide invaluable insight on, and unparalleled access to, customer behaviour.

After four years of an engineering degree, I completed a communications degree at the University of Technology Sydney. In my previous role, I was working with major industrial global companies, such as Siemens, Autodesk, and CISCO, helping them to put together content marketing strategies for targeting the industrial market.

I went to university in Mexico. I was initially interested in industrial design because I had an interest in large objects and projects, and wanted to create things for spaces. But when I sat my college entrance exam, I realized that I would have more job opportunities in graphic design.

I’m from New Jersey, near New York City. I moved to New York for college, and studied at the School of Visual Arts. Starting in the design, print, and production industry, I worked in New York City for over six years.

I’m from Sendai Prefecture. I studied Liberal Arts and North American Studies at Akita International University (AIU), a liberal arts school where I spent three years. I was also an exchange student for one year at the Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburg. During that time, I took a one-month study trip to Senegal and Gambia.