Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

A lot of people are surprised when we tell them we’re based in Hong Kong. For a publication and brand looking to influence creative culture, it seems strange we didn’t rush to another city to make our mark. But there are a lot of practical, personal and creative reasons that make this such a great city to start in—and stay in. In this edition of Building the Brand, Charis, Cody, Elphick and Nate share their thoughts on why we’re here.

Narration by Cody Horne, Elphick Wo, Nate Kan & Charis Poon
Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

LOT2046 is a subscription-based service which distributes a basic set of clothing, footwear, essential self-care products, accessories, and media content. The clothes are dispensable: as they wear out, they can be bundled and returned, eliminating clutter. The set of items seen s from "lot #002."

Narration by Eugene Kan & Nathan Kan
Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos by Alex Maeland

What is MAEKAN?

MAEKAN is

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

Often before a MAEKAN story becomes the sounds you hear and the pictures you see, it starts out as a script—and that means a lot of words. While writing or typing every day is a great habit to develop creativity, it’s also a good way to get achy fingers and eyes too if you’re not careful. In this latest MAEKAN Tools, Nate shares three uncommon tools that help make his day-to-day writing work smoother and more manageable.

Narration by Nate Kan
Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos by Chris Lim

What is MAEKAN?

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

During our trip to Tokyo in February, the team visited Jazzy Sport, a prominent Japanese record store in Meguro. After striking a conversation with the storeowner, MAEKAN was invited to an exclusive music event hosted together with Blue Note, featuring José James, a jazz and hip-hop inspired vocalist.

Listen in on our recount of digging through vinyl at Jazzy Sport and the night of soulful funky beats that followed.

Narration by Cody Horne, Chris Lim & Elphick Wo
Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos by

On MAEKAN It Up #020 (we made it to episode 20 somehow), Eugene and Charis discuss the case for adding sneaker culture to the school curriculum based on its importance within youth and popular culture. Eugene manages to show how out of the loop he is when it comes to memes. Also, we explore how media companies currently strategize their push notifications and what are things we should be aware of.

• Why Sneaker Culture Should Be Taught in Schools
• Bella Hadid Goes Sneaker Shopping With Complex
• Hey, quick question: Why are models so bad at planking?

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

As the essential component to producing our stories, the process of recording has come a long way since we first started working on audio stories. Bringing scripts to life using only our voices has been both a challenging and rewarding experience for the entire editorial team. In this edition of Building The Brand, Cody, Elphick and Nate talk about how they went from not having any experience with podcast recording to where they are today.

Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos by Eugene Kan & Chris Lim

Wh

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Sarah Kim is a woman of many talents. By day she works at an ad agency in New York. By night and the weekend, she’s a publisher with By Way Of Brooklyn. Not content with her outlets, she sought out another medium, art curation. Together with her partners Arielle and Lynsday, the trio represents Feminine Product. The show celebrating women was a physical manifestation of many talks and discussions culminating in what is feminity and what was Feminine Product’s approach to it.

Over the course of an afternoon spent before the show had opened, we engaged openly and without judgment over some of th

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

When the information age nostalgically looked back toward traditional craftsmanship for inspiration, we ended up with hand-stitched leather cases for our tablets and artisan wooden styluses to go with it. But for something we use literally every day, why haven’t we been handcrafting sneakers? This is just what bespoke luxury sneaker label No.One does, a dozen and a half pairs at a time. Good things take time, and founder Mark Gainor doesn’t seem to mind.

Script and Narration by Nate Kan
Audio by Elphick Wo
Photos by Eugene

On MAEKAN It Up #019, Eugene and Charis discuss the future of "corporate" geo-tagging based on a recent project between Snapchat, and Jeff Koons' balloon dog sculpture. It incorporates insights from Sebastian Errazuriz, a Chilean artist and a designer based in New York City who's been outspoken on the role of brands in our digital public spaces. We also discuss the big picture behind Dropbox's colorful rebranding and the suggestion that Dropbox is losing its focus on product.

• Jeff Koons’ augmented reality Snapchat artwork gets ‘vandalized’
• Watch: Sebastian Errazuriz on corporate geo-tagging

Listen to the story here and see the accompanying photos at MAEKAN.com for the best experience.

At MAEKAN, we're always open to different mediums if they help enhance a story, and while we do shoot a lot in digital, we've definitely all got a special place in our hearts for film. The texture and colors produced by film have been instrumental in capturing both the rich emotions of our stories and the candid memories on our trips. In this MAEKAN Tools, Chris Lim shares the two analog film cameras he shoots with to produce images for many of our stories: his compact and discreet Yashica T4 and his medium format Pentax 645.

What is MAEKAN?