Although I’d heard about waterproof music players, it wasn’t till last week at my local pool that I actually saw one, a discreet little player affixed to a bather’s swim cap, and two little earbuds on a short wire, like the tendrils of a young snow pea. Now far be it for me to imitate my fellow swimmers in aquatic fashions, but this little invention truly piqued my interest and sent me in a frantic search through the interwebs for the gadget.

While there are several waterproof MP3 players on the market, two in particular have risen to the top. First up is the uCan from Ubanana. With its yellow and black colour scheme, this product is reminiscent of the Sony Sports Walkman range back when Sony used to run tings. The uCan headset wraps around your ears and neck, and has two earbuds dangling off the sides of the unit. The music player is integrated into the unit. It’s waterproof to a depth of 3m, but because of its simple design, it’s also aimed at runners and cyclists. With a 2GB memory and a price tag of around $145 (£89), you can’t go wrong with the uCan, can you?

Well Speedo, the Sheffield-based swimwear brand, seem to think so, and insist that their Aquabeat can’t be beat. While the name is a bit naff (the word Aqua conjures up, in my mind at least, images of that godawful Scandinavian europop outfit) the product seems to be well designed for its purpose. The player clips on to your goggles and the sound it delivers is crystal clear. Some users find that after a few lengths, water can seep in past the earbud and interrupt the mellifluous experience but others wouldn’t be seen dead in the pool without their Aquabeat. With a 1GB player starting at around  $85 (£55), it’s quite reasonable too.

To give you an idea of what swimming with music might be like, check the video for Smoke City’s ‘Underwater Love’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Until now…

Meet “the official 3DD aviator.” Yes, that’s right—3-D glasses styled in the uber-classic aviator-style frame. As in, yes, when everyone else around you is wearing conventional 3-D glasses, you, in fact, are sporting specs you might actually wear in public. In fact, that’s not a bad idea! These particular 3D aviators were actually developed in conjunction with a book called 3DD: A 3-D Celebration of Breasts, a compilation of iconic cleavage images in three dimensions from New York photographer Henry Hargreaves. However he came up with the concept, it’s a relief that finally one can find a pair of 3-D glasses that look good even outside a darkened movie theater…

Is that tradition Jack Spade and K-Swiss have announced a similar, but more straightforward – likely less aggravating – collaboration surrounding the first reprinting of Take Ivy, a book of photography featuring shots of sharply-dressed bourgeoisie during the 1960s. K-Swiss and Jack Spade’s contribution to the relaunch is a heavy-grade sweatshirt with silkscreened elbow patches, and a pretty sharp belt, both meant to update the styles featured in the book.

The package will be available August 31st only at Jack Spade retail.

In the video below Mr. Powers: takes on the suits with his encyclopedic knowledge of the game and summarily blows their minds, calls seasoned MMA fighter Urijah Faber a siss for jumping rope, stares down tight end Jeremy Shockey, and explains the physiology underpinning Secret Muscle Theory:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next up by Jake, a peek at top US designer and Southern gentleman Billy Reid – classic inspiration

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Taco Madness Competition was started by Taco, an LA-focused blog devoted solely to the you-know-whats. The competition is divided into four regional brackets, with thirty-two tortilla mongers vying to be named Top Taco. Last year the thirty-three year-old Yuca’s took top prize, deservedly so. But what have you done for me lately??

The Competition begins HERE.

Like my high school basketball coach implored, “Quit looking at your feet, you’ll never get anywhere!” This is true of almost anything, especially when it comes to running. Marathons are a competition, but they are also a celebration of city life, and in the case of the new and improved LA Marathon “urban life.” For Los Angelenos, it’s really one of the few days that makes for a good excuse to get out of your car and explore on two feet this wildly complex and eclectic city.

This piece, directed by local boys Rick and Buddy aka Six Stair, ‘Don’t Forget to Look Up’ is a reminder to take in the sights, sounds and people as runners traverse the wide expanse between hillsides and shoreline. Narrated by Peter Abraham, Creative Director for the LA Marathon (Sun March 21st), the film is witness to the myriad of signs and strange little monuments that we pass each and every day. His natural ability to voice the spirit of this event, turning 25 this year and uniquely revamped, as well as put into context the even playing-field that has become running’s  involvement in LA history. Unlike any other urban city, running is part of the fabric that makes living here so great. Once upon a time the band Missing Persons sang that “Nobody walks in LA,” but time is certainly showing that almost everybody “runs in Los Angeles.” Take a peek at Six Stair’s vision of the new route from Dodger Stadium to Santa Monica as they “ran” it, on skatedecks and in 4-cylinder beaters.

Watch for more coverage from a runners perspective here at kspace.tv featuring our own Jenn Tran. Also, check out the new LA Marathon poster created specially by Shepard Fairey’s team at Studio One.

Be sure to take a look at Six Stair’s ‘K is for Kalifornia’ piece, one of 3 of the new K•Swiss video series ‘Things That are Classic’ paying homage to the iconic brand’s Classic heritage.

White on white—from abstract painters Kasimir Malevich and Robert Ryman to the humble tennis shoe, pale monochrome on top of pale monochrome has always proven a classic style. No one knows this dictum better than Mario Lombardo, who has created a distinct aesthetic under the nom de design Bureau.

That’s clear in his poster concept for K-Swiss’ You Gotta Know Your Classics poster campaign, Blond On Blond, where the words and colors (or lack thereof) literally deconstruct off the page. It’s a witty homage to the all-white tennis style epitomized by the K-Swiss Classic shoe, a look that has dominated tennis fashion since… well, the K-Swiss Classic (see history of).

The Berlin-based Lombardo is one of the leading design forces in Europe, re-energizing print media spanning fashion to photography, magazines to corporate design and record labels, garnering numerous awards  with his haunting, unexpected imagery and groundbreaking typography. KSPACE discussed all this and more with the designer who puts “icon” into iconoclasm.

KSPACE: Where are you located? How does your home base influence your sensibility?
Lombardo: Recently I live in Berlin-Mitte; a few years ago I was based in Cologne, Hamburg and Buenos Aires.  When I achingly realized that I really work a lot, I decided to create an environment that keeps me really happy. Now I have a combination of everything I really love. I designed my own furniture out of blackboards and have a lot of lovely people working in my office: we drink good coffee, and as often as I can I cook for us all. . .

KSPACE: How did you start designing? What inspired you? What have been your greatest achievements?
Lombardo: I started designing in the mid-‘90s, always with the goal to design magazines or to make stuff for the music industry. I never thought of making a music magazine, but i did – and I think I’ve done it well. I got over 50 awards for it. Afterwards, I’ve made some fashion, music and politic ones – this was also fun. Now my goal is to combine everything. But I don’t know how to do it yet.

KSPACE: What do you think you bring to the design process? If you had to explain your aesthetic to your grandmother (or mine), how would you do it?
Lombardo: I create poetic pictures with a meta layer, and combine them with a classic typography. I’m not really modern; I never was.

KSPACE: What are your classic influences? What makes a design classic and truly timeless?
Lombardo: My most important influence in my life is music. I also love my family, friends and colleagues, the news and gossip! That all keeps me on the ground. What I also need is stress, but mum’s the word! Don’t tell my other clients!

KSPACE: How did you get involved with this K-Swiss initiative? What were you trying to say about the Classic’s history with your contribution?
Lombardo: I love the thin strokes on the classics. So I made a handmade type out of it. I love to do things with my hands. I wanted to create a camouflage ornament for this poster: white on white, blond on blond.

KSPACE: Lastly, if you could be the all-mighty design guru for humanity, what would you change and instigate globally to make the world a better place?
Lombardo: What? If I would be something like that (If i had the power), my mission would be something like combining all religions into one. I think it’s really silly to fight about something like religion. Do you know moslbuddjewchristhindao? It’s a fragrance a friend of mine, Daniel Josefsohn, created. “Unifaith” – I love this idea.

Non-Format’s contribution (above) ‘We Killed Canvas, Sorry’ to K-Swiss’ You Gotta Know Your Classics campaign, for example, uses oversize type to crushingly illustrate the theme with subtle absurdist humor and a nod to Constructivism.

KSPACE spoke with Non-Format to get a peek into Ekhorn and Forss’ innovative visual alchemy.

KSPACE: Where are you located? How does your home base influence your sensibility?
Jon: We met and established Non-Format in London. We worked together in our London studio until I moved to the U.S. in 2007. Last year Kjell moved to Oslo, Norway. Neither of us is terribly convinced that our locations have much bearing on our design sensibilities, but it’s difficult to prove that.

KSPACE: How did you start designing? What inspired you? What have been your greatest achievements?
Kjell: I studied design in school, then worked for a while for an advertising agency in Norway before moving to London to study graphic design at Central Saint Martins. I’m inspired by anything and everything that sparks my imagination. Any attempts to narrow it down to specifics would be a fool’s errand.
Jon: I completed one year of foundation studies at Cheltenham School of Art and went on to study graphic design at what is now De Montfort University in Leicester. Our greatest achievement is being able to sustain a working relationship for over ten years and with more than 4,000 miles between us for the last three of them. How do we do it?

Cover/packaging for Jean-Jacques Perrey & Luke Vibert 'Mini Moog' cd

KSPACE: What do you think you bring to the design process? If you had to explain your aesthetic to your grandmother (or mine), how would you do it?
Jon: I think P. Scott Makela summed it up best with his business name: Words & Pictures for Business & Culture. That’s pretty much what we do.

Art direction & complete redesign of Wire '01-'05

KSPACE: What are your “classic” influences? What makes a design classic and truly timeless?
Kjell: Nothing is really timeless. Even nature is constantly in a state of flux.
Jon: But even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

KSPACE: How did you get involved with this K-Swiss initiative ? What were you trying to say about the Classic’s history with your contribution?
Kjell: We were invited to contribute a poster design. We were simply trying to convey the message we were given with as much impact and clarity as possible.
Jon: We also wanted to give the K-Swiss Classic a voice. Apparently it’s very polite.

Poster catalogue/program for theatre section of 37th Venice Biennale

KSPACE: Lastly, if you could be the all-mighty design guru for humanity, what would you change and instigate globally to make the world a better place?
Kjell: This sort of question is too difficult to answer. It would be nice to think one simple piece of design could end world hunger and poverty, but everything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential has unexpected side-effects.
Jon: Be careful what you wish for…

Get yourself a copy of the Non-Format design (or any of the 8 original designs) here

Get your own copy now of any of these 8 gems by sending us an email simply with your choice or choices of these Limited Edition posters plus your mailing address and they’ll be on the way to you within a few weeks

Rolling Stone called 1999’s Fruit of the Vine—the first film from filmmaker duo Rick Charnoski and Coan Buddy Nichols, aka Six Stair —“a seminal work of scraped knees, bruised elbows, and big air.” The filmmaking duo made the visceral, exciting Fruit of the Vine in homage to the world of pool skating, and the authenticity and spontaneity of skateboard culture finds itself infecting every frame of Six Stair’s work. The acclaim of Fruit of the Vine, however, led Six Stair to opportunities outside skating, and Charnoski and Nichols have found themselves shooting everything from personal work to commercials, music videos, and more, including an extensive Pearl Jam documentary. Six Stair haven’t neglected the skate genre either with their recent crown-jewel films Deathbowl to Downtown and Blood Shed (for which they’re already planning a sequel).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Naturally, Six Stair’s raw, honest cinematic aesthetic and Los Angeles home base made them the perfect choice to visually capture the essence of Kalifornia through their gritty and scrappy lens in K is for Kalifornia (above top) their first of 3 striking pieces that kicks-off the new K-Swiss video series paying homage to the iconic brand’s Classic heritage. To that end, Six Stair created a series of short, impressionistic, imagistic films that embody Cali’s iconic iconoclasm as a home for sports and creativity.

Recently, KSPACE spoke to Rick and Buddy about the making of “K is for Kalifornia” and what drives their vision as filmmakers, skaters and creators.

Kspace: How did you guys come together as Six Stair? What was the mission?

Rick Charnoski: The mission of Six Stair was to take all our gear, all our boxes of hard drives and random film ephemera, and put it under one roof, where we could produce random creative projects on our own terms.

Coan Buddy Nichols: Six Stair is actually our new company—we were together as NCPfilms for about seven years before we decided to start Six Stair. We made a film together in 1999 called Fruit of the Vine; it did pretty well, and we got some other jobs. I guess we figured we had to have a production company name, even though we were editing in Rick’s bedroom…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kspace: What was the experience of making your first film, Fruit of the Vine? What did you learn? What fun did you have?

Buddy: Making Fruit of the Vine was super fun, organic and natural. When we made Fruit of the Vine, I had been skating for years and knew almost nothing about the scene. I don’t think we talked about how to do it or made any plans—we just threw ourselves into the mix and shot what was happening. I always thought the underground aspect of skating pools was super cool—I had wanted to skate backyard pools since I was a kid. The film was sort of a scheme to skate tons of pools because its hard to find them, and almost as hard to get people to take you to the ones they have found.

Rick: It was a total learning experience, and the best excuse to take a road trip with your friends and make something out of it. We didn’t know what would come of it.

Kspace: You’re known for your use of Super 8 film—an almost obsolete film stock in this digital era. What is it that drew you to Super 8?

Buddy: Everyone is so excited by Hi-Def, but I think it’s kind of boring. I love film because its real and looks so cool, and Super 8 was the only kind of film that was affordable—the cameras are super cheap, and if you have to, you can transfer the footage using a video camera and a projector. I also love the way it creates a trippy, dreamlike aspect to whatever is being filmed; also, not everyone is using super 8 so that makes it kind of cool, too…

Rick: I like scrappy-looking things. The footage always comes out pre-edited, so your story becomes pretty clear when you get your film back.

Kspace: Six Stair’s point of view comes out of skateboarding. What is it about that world that appealed to you?

Rick: Skating is a magic carpet ride into the weird zones, which is what we try to show in our films. I’ve always liked all things related to skateboarding—punk rock, D.I.Y. graphics on t-shirts, homemade ‘zines, travelling.

Buddy: Being skaters, it was the world we grew up in. We both still skate, and have since we were super young, so it’s what we know.

Kspace: Spike Jonze being the obvious example, why is it that so many filmmakers that come out of the skate culture prove so innovative?

Buddy: I think skating attracts kids who are into the D.I.Y. trip—kids who don’t want to be told what to do by a coach after school, and don’t jive with all the silly rules of most team sports, but still have tons of energy to get out. And in skating, kids make all the rules.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kspace: Six Stair’s aesthetic is raw—shot off black and white TVs, out of focus, jumpy camera, old film stock. What is that aesthetic trying to communicate?

Buddy:: I never really thought about it. I think both of us see the world through our own filter: we just make stuff that looks cool to us, and that’s how it comes out.  When we released Fruit of the Vine, I was really surprised that so many other people were into it, actually.

Rick: It’s not an aesthetic that we created consciously; it came out of wanting to tell a story and get a film out there without much money. Besides that, life isn’t always clean and perfect visually—sometimes there’s a bug in your eye, or rain or the window, so that’s how the film’s get shot.

Inside Rick and Buddy’s Six Stair lab

Kspace: How did you move that aesthetic from skate films to the music videos, commercials, fashion pieces, shorts and other things that you do? What’s the common thread, if any? How is each different?

Buddy:  Hmmmmm… I guess other people like to see the world as a trippy, dream like place too?

Rick: It’s always the same as the skate films. We just jump in and try to catch the vibe of whatever scene we’re in.

Kspace: How did you get involved with K-Swiss ? What appealed to you about the campaign?

Buddy: We were able to put together a screening in Amsterdam at their K-SPACE interactive Gallery showroom space there and it went off really well. Over a year later, they called and asked if we would be down to create some films, and it sounded like we would be able to do what we wanted.

Rick: The appeal is the challenge of taking someone’s ideas and translating them into a film. Every project is a new little adventure—it gets you out there.

Kspace: How did you devise the visual language for your K for Kalifornia spot? How did it evolve? What were you trying to capture?

Rick: It’s basically California through our lens.

Buddy: That piece came out of years of shooting random stuff around Los Angeles. That’s another bonus of Super 8 film: the cameras are really small, so we almost always have one with us. We were just capturing the trippy stuff you randomly see when you go outside.

Kspace: What is classically classic about California? What is Cali’s appeal to both a visual artist and an athlete?

Buddy: Some places are just classic because they are. As a kid growing up skateboarding on the East Coast and in the Northwest, I always dreamed of being in Southern California because it’s the epicenter. The sun and weather are so awesome, and as an outsider, it always seemed like things were different in there, just like things are different in New York City.

Rick: California has it all and provides a great place to do almost any sport in the world. it’s pretty amazing—I can’t believe this place is broke. How did that happen?

Kspace: You’ve worked with some incredible athletes and individual personalities—Germ, Andy Kessler, Tony Alva, Ray Barbee, Mike Watt, Pearl Jam. What were some memorable moments?

Buddy: A lot of times I will be somewhere filming, and I will turn to Rick and just trip out that we are there. Like, how did this happen? Are we really getting paid to do this? I think most of the good stuff is captured on film! Our website has over five hours of clips up there—lots of the memorable moments.

Rick Charnoski: I trip out every time I find myself in a weird situation with some legend or famous person. I like creative, influential characters that are out there doing crazy shit in the world. That’s why I make films—we try to make a cool film to eternalize the experience.

Kspace: From the editing to the camera moves, Six Stair’s work has a rhythm evocative of music; as well, your soundtracks tend to be interesting, unexpected choices? How does music inspire what you do, and what music in particular?

Buddy: We have always been into editing to music. It’s so fun to start cutting and watch the process change and evolve because of the music the piece is set to. Lots of times, the music almost dictates whole parts of a story or how the story is told.

Rick: For me, music is visual and conjures up ideas. Most of our music comes from people we know, or we make it ourselves. One of our closest collaborators is George Draguns aka Flying Sutra from Philadelphia—we have used his music for every film we’ve made so far, including the K for Kalifornia piece.

Kspace: Lastly, what’s in store for the future of Six Stair?

Buddy: Shooting films and making movies…

Rick: We’re working on a Cameron Crowe film about Pearl Jam for Pearl Jam’s twentieth anniversary. We’re also trying to get funding for a collection of lost and found Super 8 surf/travel films from the ‘70s. Then maybe some more narrative films—we’ll see…

Stay tuned for the next two Six Stair vids Don’t Forget to Look Up (inspired by the upcoming LA Marathon with its new 2010 makeover) and Greg Lutzka and Al Partanen a highly original piece on two generations of skaters who continue to inspire each other.

Check out a whole lot more of Six Stair

To that end, KSPACE caught up with Grandpeople’s Magnus Helgesen to talk all things classic and design.

KSPACE:  Where are you located? How does your home base influence your sensibility?
Magnus Helgesen: We’re located in the small town of Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. It’s also known as the “gateway to the fjords”: The mountains shoot up from the North Sea, draining the town in almost constant rain. An unusually cold winter has resulted in quite a lot of snow this year, and people have actually started skiing to work! Living close to nature and its delights and perils has influenced us in a number of ways, but most important is the vibrant cultural activity in Bergen. With only 255,000 inhabitants, there’s still a lot of stuff going on.

KSPACE:  How did you start designing? What inspired you?
Magnus Helgesen: We have always been keen illustrators, long before we ever knew of anything called graphic design. For me, it was my older brother who opened up to the idea of design, by giving me Motorpsycho albums with sleeve designs by Kim Hiorthøy. I think he’s been a big inspiration for many Norwegian designers of our generation. But later we have come to find that all parts of visual culture inspire us. And I mean all parts, from antique to contemporary art, high brow and low brow, pop culture, fine art, science, and so on.

Illustration for Tokion article & front cover, collaboration with Kim Hiorthøy

KSPACE: What do you think you bring to the design process? If you had to explain your aesthetic to your grandmother (or mine), how would you do it?
Magnus Helgesen: When asked by his grandfather, Christian here at the studio usually answers: “Yes, I still do a lot of drawings and stuff, and no, we do not have a printing press at the office,” and leaves it at that.

Cover design for Chuck Palahniuk's 'Fight Club"

KSPACE: What are your “classic” influences? What makes a design classic and truly timeless?
Magnus Helgesen: Think I’ll have to skip this one—too little time.

KSPACE:  How did you get involved with this K-Swiss initiative ? What were you trying to say about the Classic’s history with your contribution?
Magnus Helgesen: Our friend Fabian Jenny invited us to the project. The notes for our chapter inspired us to explore the American modernism of the 1960s; we were looking for a connection between highbrow and pop-culture. Thinking about the K-Swiss sneaker originally as a sportswear for the tennis playing upper middle class, and its present role in contemporary street fashion, the result became a mixture of David Hockney and the LA Dodgers. There’s something truly Californian about the light in Hockney’s paintings from this era, and we tried to capture this feeling.

7" vinyl design project /sound installation for Christian Vogel w/ Pieterjan Ginckels

KSPACE:  Lastly, if you could be the all-mighty design guru for humanity, what would you change and instigate globally to make the world a better place?
Magnus Helgesen: That’s a tough one. 100% sustainable energy supply, food production and transport, for starters? The funny thing is, most of these ideas already exist, but it’s the lack of political will and initiative that hold us back. So maybe my team would also have to design a new system for a sustainable and flexible direct democracy. It’s pretty awesome to think that real change in economic and political systems is actually just a question about logistics and information. In that sense, designers can actually make a huge difference.

Murphy and Value and Service prove versatile in their many innovative projects, putting their mark on everything from books to fashion to branding: recent V&S projects include everything from a history of the Saatchi Gallery to Selfridges’ window display, a particularly Duchampian set of DJ slipmats (see below)
—and of course, K-Swiss’ “You Gotta Know Your Classics” poster campaign.

In particular, Murphy and V&S were responsible for the witty “K for Kalifornia” deconstruction of the K-Swiss logo. We spoke to Sean about what moves him as a designer, and how he got involved with “You Gotta Know Your Classics.”

KSPACE: Where are you located? How does your home base influence your sensibility?
Sean Murphy: I’m located in East London: lots happens there so you soak it up a little. In terms of influence, it makes me want to avoid doing certain things, if that makes sense… Location is generally less important for work nowadays, but it’s always good to be around lots of interesting things.

Selfridges window display

KSPACE: How did you start designing? What inspired you?
Sean Murphy: I used to copy logos when I was a kid, so I suppose that was my introduction to a life in design.

KSPACE:  What do you think you bring to the design process? If you had to explain your aesthetic to your grandmother (or mine), how would you do it?

Sean Murphy: “Familiar but odd” is how I would describe our work—sort of old, but new.

Anti-slipmats for 'A Nice Set'

KSPACE: What are your “classic” influences? What makes a design classic and truly timeless?
Sean Murphy: I think “supernormal” is a good mantra if you want to design a classic object. A true classic is something I would buy and never pass on, something that moves with the times.

History of the Saatchi Gallery - Book in inlaid wooden crate

KSPACE:  How did you get involved with this K-Swiss initiative ? What were you trying to say about the Classic’s history with your contribution?
Sean Murphy: I got an email inviting me to participate.  The story we were assigned was pretty concise, so we reflected that in the design. It pretty much tells the story of how Switzerland became “Kalifornian.”

KSPACE:  Lastly, if you could be the all-mighty design guru for humanity, what would you change and instigate globally to make the world a better place?
Sean Murphy: Cheap and efficient public transport.

Le Rendez-vous Toyota, Paris exhibition

For more on the works of Value and Service click here

For the full Gallery of the 8 ‘You Gotta Know Your Classics’ designs click here

Based in Amsterdam, we design for print, with the goal of pushing content into new form solutions. Working mainly for the creative industry, we have completed several projects, amongst other things, for De Hallen Haarlem (museum for contemporary art, Haarlem), the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), Tubelight Magazine (Rotterdam), the Jan van Eyck Academy (Maastricht) and several artist books. And we both teach typography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

Marijke Cobbenhagen (1978, Amsterdam) and Chantal Hendriksen (1978, Delft)

Stay tuned here for insights into 7 more top emerging designers interpretations of ‘the Classic’ and a chance to win a set of the ‘You Gotta Know Your Classics’ limited edition posters

The initiative, entitled “You Gotta Know Your Classics” finds these cutting-edge international designers working on another classic form: the poster. The K-Swiss Classic was one of the first sneakers to go from high performance on the court to street style; how better, then, to bring it back to its roots than a poster that will be seen on boulevards spanning tastemaker style centers like Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Paris, and Tokyo?

Over the course of eight posters, the history and significance of the K-Swiss Classic is depicted. Did you know that the Classic jumpstarted the tradition of the white leather sneaker ? You do now. The quiet iconoclasm of this achievement gets a volume boost over the course of each poster, starting with the brand’s birth in a suburban Los Angeles garage by two actual Swiss tennis fans. The endless sunshine of California (the iconic “K” actually stands for “Kalifornia”) provided the ultimate research & development hub, the year round tennis courts untainted by ice and snow proving an ideal hothouse laboratory to perfect the product. There the enhanced performance of the leather sneaker, first introduced for soccer/football, quickly made canvas obsolete (hence ‘We Killed Canvas. Sorry’) as a real contender for tennis shoes intended for real athletic use. But the Swiss-inspired modernism of the shoe made it explode as a style accessory, its comfort enhancing its status as a leisure object.

The K-Swiss Classic has endured for over four decades in its original design; it has proven so enduring, this design initiative proves the perfect choice to shake it up a little. From Jimmy Connors to Helmut Newton to today’s skateboarders and designer/artists like Shinichiro Arakawa and Julia Hederus, it’s been the stealth choice for performance and style, the personality of the wearer filling it and making each unique. These limited edition posters express that individual spirit the Classic has provided for those trendsetters: here at KSPACE, we will be profiling the designers from this campaign over the coming weeks, revealing insights into their inspiration of what’s sure to be a new crop of design innovation ready now to last for future generations to come.

Designers:
Non-Format / Minneapolis & Oslo
Life of the mind / Los Angeles
Bureau / Berlin
Lemon Scented Tea / Amsterdam
Sulki Choi and Sung Min Choi / Seoul
Value and Service / London
Grandpeople / Bergen
Cobbenhagen & Hendriksen / Amsterdam

It goes a little something like this – between 1966 and 1986 California sports brand K-Swiss created and sold a single shoe: The Classic. In that short period, The Classic rapidly evolved from being the world’s most advanced shoe on the tennis court to being the first high-performance white leather sneaker. Dare it be said that every other leather tennis shoe that followed was derived from The Classic. Now um after a mere forty-four years after its launch, K-Swiss is finally telling The Classic’s story and sharing some choice secrets along the way about its quietly iconic shoe.

Secrets like why its original owners only produced a single shoe for twenty years and what the ‘K’ in its name actually stands for, all unusually interpreted and told with the help of Amsterdam storytelling agency Lemon Scented Tea and eight top emerging international designers visually narrating the story via a series of collectable and we do mean Limited edition posters.

Each chapter of this classic tale from ‘No Talk Policy’ to ‘K is for Kalifornia’ to ‘Blond on Blond’ and ‘We Killed Canvas. Sorry’ all provide a fresh unique ontext to The Classic, while the designers were given free reign to interpret the stories graphically. Each poster is a stand-alone illustration, underscoring the lack of hierarchy in The Classics’s own story.

Stayed tuned here as the story unfolds and for details on when and how we will be giving away these choice collectables and a chance to win your own Classics.