Giant Robot in Honolulu Academy Blog

Meet Giant Robot’s Eric Nakamura: Connecting with people through art

In 1994, Eric Nakamura was a cool 24-year-old Japanese-American punk skater in LA into art and film. There wasn’t a publication that spoke to him and his interests, so he started his own. It was a zine called Giant Robot. (It was a golden age of zines and upstart magazines—the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal launched in 1993, and Vice was born in 1996.) With the publishing landscape drying up, Nakamura printed his final issue in 2011, but by that time he also oversaw Giant Robot stores and the GR2 art gallery, and the name is as influential as ever in the realm of hip design that skews kawaii. In fact, Giant Robot—the store—is often cited as the birthplace for Asian pop culture products and Uglydolls. Continued at the (link)