Masafumi Kajitani

Masafumi Kajitani is the founder of VHS Mag, a skateboard media company from Japan. A company that I genuinely respect. Like music, skateboarding has many sub genres or sub cultures, if you will. VHS Mag associates themselves with the gritty, urban, pushing through the streets at night and highly creative side of skateboarding. I knew I wanted to do something unique with this editorial. Skate spots in the city require thought, precision and tons of creativity so I the layout for this one had to follow suit.

It doesn’t follow any conventional grid and nothing seems to be very uniform. The intention was to let the photos break through the invisible lines of the “grid” or the spine to give the reader something with a little more style that what they’re used to.

Style(not fashion) is everything in skateboarding. The Japanese understands that better than anyone. I wanted the layout to have a very unique style is pay homage to this idea. It’s not quite recognizable but it was still designed to be read easily.

For VHS Mag, showcasing the city in their videos is crucial. The city is a character itself in this story. To drive that point home, I slipped in a wide shot of Tokyo in the background of each page.