JDI organic Farm

When entering JDI`s office (you are always invited to do that!), you will notice a different atmosphere from other companies. It feels more like a home, has small personal items and pictures and feels comfortable all in all. One thing that makes our working place so cozy are the cherry trees outside and the green plants inside. Especially in Japan there is the believe that by having plants and flowers in your home, the home and everybody in it will prosper and flourish.
The green age took over from there and is forming our everyday lifes:
Since a few weeks we are working on our very own visual work which will be a featured advertising in important magazines but is also the beginning of JDI`s art gallery. A few blog entries will be about this piece of art, so I`ll just give you a short sum-up of it`s contents: A young and successful business-men is using his room in his appartment to plant and grow his own organic vegetables. It`s a vivid piece of contemporary art and will surely be inspiring to you!

I myself am growing my own vegetables at home and I guess we all have some plants or flowers.
But JDI - inspired by the organic lifestyle - has its own farm now!

A month ago Kataoka-san bought a few planters and organic soil, along with a momiji (Japanese maple) and some other plants and we began planting the vegetables we liked: eggplants, two different kinds of raddish, salad, cucumbers. The farm grew larger and we added rosemary and stevia and are planning a herb planter.

When it comes to our own visual work, but also advertising, the concept is to create something that is non-existant in this world, something unbelievable and sensational. It can and should be inspiring to us! We got inspired by our own visual - the farm in a luxurious city-appartment. By something that is out of this world, we felt like making something so in-this-world-ish, something very very fundamental.
And by planting and seeing our vegetables grow we got to feel what natural life truely is, how simple but yet powerful nature is and that we belong to it.

Especially in this age of technolgy, we get a result of what we create immediately. But at times this "harvest" can be shallow, because it`s a digital, flat result (even in 3D). With our farm on our companies terrace we are able to watch our vegetables grow everyday and we have a true, fathomable result, a harvest that is not only made by our own hands (and nature`s power) but that is edable, good for our health and environment.

Having our plants and vegetables at home and work, we truly get positive energy and karma from them:
Everyday we go out on our terrace, watch our "children" grow and get new, fresh energy for work and life and inspiration to work on new visual ideas that will hopefully affect us and others to produce more things that will have an effect on us.
If you cannot believe what I am saying, you are - wherever you are - invited to visit our office here in Akasaka/Tokyo, spend some time in our cozy farm and eat some frehshly picked veggies! ;)

I will give you an update of our cute cucumbers soon! They are growing rapidly every day and their tentacles, looking for a place to get a hold of, are the most fascinating thing!

Yours, Manuel