Happenings: Feeding the Future

Okay, not directly related to design, but a good happening nonetheless - This Sunday The Hawaii Independent, in collaboration with Yelp and Whole Foods, is putting on "Feeding the Future", a panel discussion on the future of our local food system. The event is taking place at Fresh Cafe from 12 noon until 3 pm.

The panelists, representing key figures in Hawaii's food system, will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing local farms, the next generation of local restauranteurs, and specific calls to action to Hawaii’s people.

Related to design however is this lovely event flyer/infographic, which depicts what a food-focused community in Hawaii might look like. It contains among other things sidewalk cafes, food trucks, active fishponds, farms, and sidewalk fruit trees. Beautiful! The illustration was done by recent UH graphic program design graduate, Jeffrey Gress.

In The News: Family Signature

A sneak peak of one of the t-shirt designs for the ITO: Interisland Travelwrights event

In today's Honolulu Star Advertiser, Style Editor Nadine Kam writes about "ITO: Interisland Travelwrights", the Interisland Terminal x Zane Family collaborative installation/pop-up shop happening from June 3 - 12 at the Waikiki Parc Hotel. The event will "highlight the unique and beloved approach that the Zane Family brings to their creative work as cultural practitioners and designers of contemporary aloha attire."

For the article in its entirety, visit the Star Advertiser webpage here, and for more information on the event itself, visit the Interisland Terminal webpage here.


Interisland Terminal’s “ITO: Travelwrights” is about to take off, with Sig Zane, Nalani Kanaka‘ole and their son Kuha‘o Zane in the pilot seat on a journey that touches on Hawaii travel, past, present and future.

Sig Zane is a Hilo-based designer known for his limited-edition prints that mix contemporary graphic elements with ideas rooted in Hawaiian culture and ideals. Kanaka‘ole is a Na Hoku Hanohano Award winner and kumu hula for the Hilo-based Halau O Kekuhi, a duty she shares with her sister Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele. Both are the daughters of renowned hula practitioner Edith Kanaka‘ole, whose name graces the stadium that is home to the annual Merrie Monarch Festival hula competition.

Kuha‘o Zane gained his love of hula through his parents and is recognized for the street style he brought to The Cutlery and now to Sig Zane Designs.

The art and design event, opening June 2 at the Waikiki Parc Hotel and continuing through June 12, brings the Big Island family of visual and performing artists to Oahu in a collaborative pop-up boutique and art exhibition featuring a trio of art unveilings and talk-story sessions with each artist, as well as a “Piano & Bubbles” session that offers insight into the family’s creative dynamic.

It’s not every kid who’s willing to collaborate with Mom and Dad into adulthood, but Sig Zane said they brought Kuha‘o into their creative sessions early “and we’re lucky he still wants to eat dinner with us.”

“‘Piano and bubbles’ is a thing we do all the time. It’s how we come up with ideas,” Zane said. “It really started when Kuha‘o was a child. We’d sit down to eat dinner and we’d recap the things happening to us during the day or the week.

“As he got older, we took that one step further, continuing to meet and talk about creative ideas, hashing out what must be done to keep moving forward.”

Over the years, the family added a backdrop of soft piano music to accompany their discussions, with glasses of champagne that helped ideas flow.

It’s how “ITO: Travelwrights” came to be after the artists were invited by the arts group Interisland Terminal to show on Oahu. Interisland Terminal was founded in January 2009 by art-minded individuals as a way of helping Hawaii reach its creative potential by encouraging creative approaches to civic and social challenges.

Playing off the name and mission of Interisland Terminal, the family adopted the three-alphabet code for the Hilo International Airport, ITO, adding “Travelwrights” as a reference to savvy travelers who are able to move through the world with ease, speed and comfort.

Because their business involves frequent interisland travel, Zane said they care how they travel and what they carry with them.

“This led us to create a line of accessories that we would want to use ourselves,” he said.

This includes a range of comfortable clothing, totes, bags, computer and other cases to manage lives complicated by gadgets.

“Even a simple thing, like something to hold all your computer wires — how do you carry that? We all need these things as technology has evolved,” he said.

Linking each item is a fabric print, available in dozens of colors, featuring the imprint of each of the designers, incorporating elements applied with the ohe kapala, or bamboo stamp, on a triangular grid representing the stars that guided ancient Polynesian travelers. Within the grid are Kanaka‘ole’s stylized mantas, swimming in great numbers that would have been visible to ocean travelers; Sig Zane’s kaula, or canoe lashing; and Kuha‘o Zane’s graphic rendering of the braided rope.

In his own artwork, to be unveiled June 7, Sig Zane contemplated the position of being a “citizen of the window seat.”

“When we fly, everyone always wants that window seat, where they can see what things look like and get another perspective from the air. Taking off and being in the clouds is like being in the cloud of ideas. It gives you that time to be still, clear our minds, meditate and really see what’s out there.”

In The News: Hale Piihonua

"Team Hawaii" - a group of students, administrators, and faculty from various disciplines at the University of Hawaii, Kapiolani Community College, and Honolulu Community College - has designed a "net-zero" home, one that generates as much energy as it consumes, to compete in the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon this fall. The home is called Hale Piihonua, which means house connected to the land in Hawaiian. Architecture and engineering students came up with the home's design, business students are handling the marketing and fundraising, and culinary students will be preparing a meal from the aquaponics system.

For the full story on Hale Piihonua and Team Hawaii, check out the Star Advertiser article here.

Rendering of Hale Piihonua | Team Hawaii webpage

In The News: Fighting Eel to open up shop in Kailua

Pacific Business News reports that local clothing company Fighting Eel will be opening a store in Kailua, Oahu. A specific date was not given. The Kailua store will be the company's second boutique - the first being in Honolulu's Chinatown district.

My favorite look from Fighting Eel's Summer 2011 Collection

The brand's designers Rona Bennett and Lan Chung are prime examples of local designers doing it big! Not only can their simple, yet sexy dresses and tops be found in hundreds of boutiques around the US, but also are have been worn by such celebs as Paris Hilton and Eva Longoria.


Bennett and Chung
(Image borrowed from the Fighting Eel website)

Tidbit Extra: It doesn't stop there! Did you know that Chinatown t-shirt shop Tee Tee Bar is also owned and curated by this dynamic duo??!! (Not sure if this is old news for most, especially being that the two shops are right next to each other on Bethel Street, but I sure was impressed to find this out recently!)

In The News: Juicies’ raises $5,000 in 3 days to produce technicolor iPhone chargers

In the magazine's online blog, Hawaii Business Magazine's Jason Ubay discusses how Laurens Laudowicz and crew were able to fundraise (and exceed) the $5,000 needed to fund the production of the sustainable and colorful iPhone, iPad, and iPod chargers. The article in its entirety can be found here.

The goal was to raise $5,000 in 30 days. It took only 3.

Juicies, a Hawaii-based company producing colorful charger cords for Apple’s ubiquitous hand-held products, started a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign on Friday, April 22. (Kickstarter presents a creative project on its site and individuals pledge money to get the project off the ground. Pledges can be as low as $1. Basically, the social media crowd funds the project.)

By Friday afternoon, Juicies had raised more than $1,500. By 11 p.m. on Sunday, April 24, it was over the $5,000 mark. Michael Sorenson (@RECreateHI), a business partner in the venture, says they’re excited about hitting their goal and credits strong support from Hawaii residents. “A lot of it went viral locally,” he says. (If you’d like to see for yourself, there’s plenty of buzz on the #Juicies Twitter hashtag.)
The goal now is to get as many Juicies chargers into people’s hands as they can.

Apple’s iPhone, iPod and iPad products all have accessories in myriad designs to personalize the gadgets, but local entrepreneur Laurens Laudowicz (@laudowicz) has tapped a previously untouched concept – multicolor charger cords. Until now, the chargers only came in white.

After a few home test trials coloring existing chargers with dyes and spray paint, Laudowicz decided to use a manufacturer. The product has been designed locally and will be produced at an undisclosed offshore location. All rubber and plastic parts will come from recycled materials like plastic bottles, and the wiring and 30-pin connector comes from the same manufacturer that Apple uses. (Check out Juicies Facebook page to see the difference between using the original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, and a cheap knockoff.)

Sorenson says they used Kickstarter instead of a traditional bank loan because they wanted to engage the local community and give them the ability to be part of the project. Aside from a media appearance locally on KHON, the story has only appeared on blogs locally and nationally. No money has been spent on “traditional” advertising.

Last Friday, Sorenson said the company believes it can raise much more than its $5,000 goal. Worldwide, there are around 450 million iPods, iPhones and iPad owners. The ultimate goal for the company is to have the product alongside other accessory products at Apple’s retail stores.

All current pledges will be fulfilled, but, because Juicies wants to produce the charger cords in a sustainable way, the manufacturing costs will be high. Sorenson says they’d like to fulfill the remaining pledges to get as many Juicies cords in people’s hands as possible.

Pledges have come from Hawaii, across the United States from California to New York, and internationally in places like Australia, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The cords come in 9 different colors and a 10th mystery color. There’s an incentive with each pledge, depending on the amount. A pledge of $1 or more gets a Juicie cable. (The Juicies Kickstarter page says a fair retail price would be $19. As of April 26, 1,800 pledges – and 1,800 cables – were available.) For a pledge of $200, the buyer gets all 10 colors plus a box of pineapples, which can be shipped internationally. And two people can pledge $5,000 each and receive a table-top version of Kasey McMahon’s Connected art piece.

The Juicie cable is compatible with all iPhone, iPod and iPad products using the 30-pin connector.