International brand Moleskine held its MOLESKINE TRADE SHOW Spring/Summer 2018 annual event on November 15 and 16 in Tokyo.

Membership-based factory Makers’ Base recently launched its new permanent shop Makers’ Base Chiba in the JUNNU wing of the Sogo Chiba department store in Chiba, Japan. Continuing from the first part of this blog series, Junpei Matsuda (photo, above), COO of Makers’ Inc., talked about the services available at Makers’ Base Chiba, as well as plans for the future.

Sogo Chiba, a department store located in Chiba, Japan, recently opened the doors to its newly refurbished JUNNU shopping wing and held the “JUNNU Christmas Night” opening event on December 8, 2017. Makers’ Base, a membership-based shared factory featured in previous editions of the Imagine blog*, opened Makers’ Base Chiba, a permanent shop at the refurbished JUNNU wing. On the day of the opening event, customers enjoyed creating customized items using photos that they brought in to the workshop.

In this part, Kazuharu Muramatsu of the company’s DGSHAPE Market Development Department who planned the workshop, and Fab Lab Hiratsuka Director and Associate Professor of Kanagawa University Faculty of Business Administration, Daisuke Doyo, who was the instructor at the event, talk about the background to the workshop and their thoughts after holding the event.

Roland DG held a fabrication workshop for educators and Fab Lab managers on September 9 and 16 at the Roland DG Creative Center located in the Tokyo Sales Office. The workshop was based on the concept of providing a fun approach to learning about electronics manufacturing, and was organized with the cooperation of Sony Corporation MESH project and Fab Lab Hiratsuka located on the Kanagawa University Faculty of Business Administration campus.

Roland DG conducted a 6-week internship program for international students from June 19 to July 28, 2017.

From July 31 to August 6, 2017, more than 1,000 Fab Labs around the world gathered in Santiago, Chile for FAB13, the 13th annual meeting of the global Fab Lab community.

ATÖLYE is an innovative makerspace and creative hub located in the center of Istanbul, Turkey that attracts an interdisciplinary network of designers, makers, engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs and other creative individuals. With 700 m2 of space, it includes event space, seminar space, co-working space and a maker lab.

For the second installment of this two-part series, we interviewed Roland DG Japan Marketing Group’s Masakatsu Asako (photo above) who organized the caerasi Design Gala event in collaboration with caerasi. Asako expressed his thoughts on the event as well as future aspirations for the Original Print Service that is currently being rolled out in Japan.

Caerasi Design Gala, an event that was held in collaboration with several creators, ran from July 14 for three days at the Roland DG Creative Center located in the Tokyo Sales Office. The gala featured exhibits and sales of items like smartphone cases and canvas prints made by 11 popular, young artists.

In the second part of this series, Junpei Matsuda, COO of Makers’ Inc. explains how UV printers are used at the workshop as well as plans he has in store for the future, and also provides insight into some of the success stories he has observed.

We visited Makers’ Base Tokyo, a membership-based shared factory run by Makers’ Inc. that was previously featured in the Imagine Blog, to see exactly how UV printers are used for creating personalized products. We’ll be bringing you more details of how this unique creative workshop operates in this two-part series.