Recently I have been getting into graphic design quite a bit as a hobby and interest area of research. Japan has some amazing magazines in all interest areas. Must like the Japanese otaku are famous for being hardcore into videogames, there are otaku (”maniac”) style magazines for many interest areas outside of videogames.
Anyways, there are two in particular I wanted to point out:
This is an internationally well known graphic design magazine that I only recently discovered. At my office there are a lot of back issues for reference and I can see why. There are some amazing designs presented across many forms of media with designers from varied backgrounds. Highly recommended. Almost always has translations of articles in English as well.
When profiling designers who are still alive they are often just given free reign to do whatever they want across their assigned pages. This results in some really cool design work.
+81 profiles design trends and designers from across the world. Articles are in both English and Japanese. The layout and design of the magazine itself is quite good and it has introduced me to a lot of skilled designers I would have otherwise would not have learned about.
nice dude, thanks for the links.