Call it a creative supergroup if you like, but please don’t call it an agency.

Separately, and in various combinations, Naoki Ito, Masashi Kawamura, Morihiro Harano, Qanta Shimizu, and Hiroki Nakamura have produced an impressive array of distinctive and critically acclaimed work. Earlier this month, the five stars announced they were leaving their respective jobs at ad shops in Tokyo and the U.S. to launch Party, a Tokyo- and New York-based creative company that they prefer not to call an agency.

The partners say they want to make Party a creative lab, and do work that marries entertainment, product development, technology, and advertising. They’ll work with brands, and on entertainment and self-driven projects across platforms and borders.

Kawamura comes from Wieden+Kennedy New York, and BBH, but is equally well known for his own projects, including the award-winning “Hibi No Neiro” video for the Japanese band Sour. Shimizu was a technical director at Tokyo digital shop IMG SRC, and recently worked with Kawamura on a more recent, interactive video for Sour called “Mirror.” Ito was creative director at Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, where, among many other things, he masterminded the “Music Shoe” project for Nike. Harano was cofounder of Japanese agency Drill, and responsible for the Gold Lion-winning “Xylophone” for NTT DoCoMo. Hiroki Nakamura was a digital creative at Dentsu, working on lauded campaigns for Uniqlo.

They all became acquainted through their work and had long entertained the idea of pooling their talents. Life schedules eventually aligned and they decided to make the leap, launching their new venture during a fraught time: the aftermath of the March disaster in Japan.

“We thought it was a miracle that we were all able to finally come together,” says Masa. “So we looked at the tragedy as an opportunity for something good–to reboot the creative culture of Japan.”

Key to the Party approach is a small, agile structure and bringing together creative and technology in a more seamless way. The essential creative unit at the shop will be the creative director/tech director team, and, similarly, creative and strategy will also be united.

While many agencies have tried to bring these disciplines together, with varying degrees of success, Party may have an advantage in that its creatives are already hybrids. Kawamura, for example, started out as a coder before working as a creative; Harano is a strategist with a strong design background.

“A lot of places are trying to make this happen… but instead of trying to help it happen within that system we wanted to get together and make it happen ourselves,” says Kawamura.

Party will be based in Tokyo and New York. The Tokyo office is nearly completed, the New York office will follow. The partners plan to revolve between the locations and they will also bring in local talent to work in, and between both markets. They are interested in bringing the Japanese sensibility, so manifest in their previous work, to Party’s output.

“Japan has traditionally been very closed,” says Kawamura. “There are lots of skilled people there, but not many ways to expose them to outside markets. It’s such an established market that people always felt that they could just work there on local projects. I thought that was leaving Japan out in the cold to an extent. We want to make this a hub between eastern and western worlds.”

In addition to a few music video projects currently in progress, so far the shop is working with Toyota and a large Japanese telecom and electronics company. The partners also plan to develop joint ventures as well as their own IP.

You guys need to check out this great photography site called PixelShaker.com. The lady that runs the site is Miaoyuan May Wang and she is available for freelance photography, photo retouching, illustration and design.

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Just look at this photo and chill.

First idea is to have two arrows that make a heart. This can be placed to the right of ‘BACK’

Second idea, is to have an arrow within the ‘K’ of ‘BACK’

Top.10 M Symbols for Morgans Media Group

This Australian McDonald’s is emblematic of the global retaurants chain’s new design direction. | Photograph Courtesy of McDonald’s NDG Australia.

Designer: Denis Weil adds flair to McDonald’s plate while being ever mindful to operations. | Photograph by Christopher Sturman

Open your eyes, Chicago, and meet the gaze of a 30-foot eyeball. That stare from the 30-foot “EYE” sculpture, officially opens this morning in Chicago’s Loop. Tony Tasset is the artist behind the eyeball.

For help with his handiwork, Tasset turned to Wisconsin-based Fiberglass Animals, Shapes & Trademarks. Sculptors built and painted the ocular mass by hand, using between 8,000 and 9,000 pounds of fiberglass and another 9,000 pounds of steel.

“Tony’s a great guy to work with,” says Darren Shauf, general manager of F.A.S.T. “He’s got a great eye.”