Screenshot of Scott Campbells‘s art on PingMag

In 2005 Japanese design company IMG SRC allowed then web designer Uleshka to experiment and granted her a special project: a blog about design. The outcome was PingMag: An online design magazine based in Tokyo evolving around the idea of finding inspiration in everything and defining the term design as broadly as one could.

PingMag was the brain child (and heart) of Uleshka, and above all it was much more than a magazine. It was not only rated Asia’s biggest and best design blog at times and set standards in blogging which have been copied many times since, it was also an international contact hub for designers, a style guide, a rediscovery of traditional crafts, unique collection of contemporary design, trend scout and high profile network.
All put together, it was an extremely fertile ground for future projects.

Quick summary of PingMag activities:

- first Japanese / English design blog from Tokyo about “Design and Making Things”

- rated Asia’s biggest and most important design-blog in 2006 (Technorati, YahooJapan News, Bloggies, Clio Shortlist)

- constantly new and inspiring articles about both world class designers and unknown artist ranging from product design to packaging, architecture, typography, illustration, photography, guerrilla gardening, fashion, video games, advertisement, light art, graphics, sex toys, crafts, street art, manga, installation…

- international hub for designers from Japan and coming to Japan, used for e.g. fashion collaborations, international design competitions, designer showcase consultation, bringing together talents for group exhibitions and recommending Japanese designers for international design conferences

- PingMag articles were translated into several languages and printed in various magazines (e.g. Taiwanese EGG Magazine or Korean GaGu magazine)

- it was frequently picked up by the most influential portals at that time (e.g. BoingBoing, Metafilter or Digg)

- PingMag invited various interesting creators to a series of PingMag Talks, where designers revealed their way of working and showed their most recent (and often unpublished) work

- extending PingMag with an extra blog called PingMag MAKE to report on the beauty of Japanese forgotten crafts

- setting up the online select-shop shopPingMag selling goodies from Japan (preferably from PingMag featured designers)

- PingMag also organized events such as the PingMag Festival, where they featured the top of Japanese underground electronic music acts together with Test Tone

Uleshka was the initiator and chief editor of this bilingual online design magazine, connecting those who put love and thought into creating. She enjoys to keep extending and using the PingMag network for exciting synergies, although the magazine officially closed down on the last day of 2008.