GOOD NEWS SHARING

PLACEText: Atsuko Kobayashi

A new shop GOOD NEWS SHARING has just opened in a building in Harajuku, Tokyo.
They deal in a variety of ‘products’ such as misprinted fax prints sent from Tomato, T-shirts with memorandums by Malcolm Mclaren, nicely designed bags produced by a swiss design collective.

Taking ‘Stylish Eco’ as its concept, the shop supplies the products which otherwise would be mere rubbish of the super stars and heros, and are reproduced as proper products.

Tei Towa provided the shop with an remix CD that was originally made for VISIONAIRE, and some other accessories made of computer chips. Buffalo Daughter provided vinyl EPs which you can’t get anywhere else.

Fortunately I had a chance to take an inetrview with Yuka Kobayashi, the owner and manager of the shop.

What was the main reason for you to open the shop GOOD NEWS SHARING?

” There are lots of products that are made in connection with the idea of ecology. But there are not many products with good design.

In Japan, those products don’t look attractive in terms of design and genarally people don’t really care about them. I thought that the best way to make people aware of the urgent envoironmental situation surrounding us was produce goodies with pop and attractive design so people are attached and get to know about that.

I used to work in the field of advertisment and product planning at a company. Though they spend a lot of time and money to keep everything going, there is always a lot of confines whatever they do.

Nothing goes right under such terrible circumstances. That’s why i decided to open this shop. At first I was just thinking to work for the shop when I have free time because I was already working for the company. But while I was talkng with Malcolm Maclaren, TOMATO, Michael Young etc, they were into my idea. They give the shop their rubbish that has properly been designed as products, which encourage me to work only for the shop.

What do you mean by the term ‘Stylish Eco’?

It’s not only an idea like ‘be kind to the mother earth’ but also “to love what you do and that’s the real envoironmentally friendly thing”.
There is always good design where there is good thinking, and there’s no good feeling without good design. That’s what I call ‘Stylish Eco’.

What do the marks and tags on the t-shirts mean?

“It represents an idea of Eco and new morality. I hope this mark will be a sort of trade mark that expresses how we’d like to preserve the wilderness and how we should respect the earth. It was designed by Simon Taylor from TOMATO. I asked him to make the mark something positive, something like a traffic signal which can automatically cheer up people when they see it.

Other than the products from the musicians and artists, GOOD NEWS SHARING deals in some other products from an American solar radio, Greek painting materials through soup and cosmetics etc.

At the entrance of the shop is a Potato Man by John Isaak. The walls inside are covered with beautiful felt. The shop looks just as if it were an unique art gallery. This is a nice place just to spend sometime.

GOOD NEWS SHARING
Address: 3F Palais-France, 1-6-1 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Tel: +81 (0)3 5414 8838

Text: Atsuko Kobayashi
Translation: Satoru Tanno

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