Daniel Ikaika Ito holds up the 0-0 edition of his new magazine, Contrast. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Magazine offers youth 'Contrast'

By Blaine Fergerstrom / Ka Wai Ola Loa

Daniel Ikaika Ito sheepishly stands before his Journalism 302 class at the Univesity of Hawai'i at Mānoa. He holds up a copy of a slick, or "sick" in now-speak, 106-page magazine with a cover featuring a cartoon illustration of an angry panda speaking to what appears to be a computer with arms, legs, and a monitor for a head, over a background of tagger graffiti scrawl.

"Hi everybody. Uh, I just wanted to make the announcement that we came out with the first edition of our new magazine. It's Volume 0-0. It's our preview edition and we're giving it away, free."

The class sits, stunned. Here before them stands a 27-year-old third-year college student who has not waited until graduation to chase his dreams.

Tired of the older, established media dictating what he should consider "cool," Ito and his friends got together, "mortgaged a house," and banzai-charged the industry! According to Ito, the magazine features avant-garde art, music, surfing, skateboarding and lifestyle articles which are targeted to his group, young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 years old.

The funny panda and computer on the cover are signatory of that audience. Unless you are intimately tuned to current youth culture, you will surely miss the significance of the Angry Woebots panda and the computer named Mainframe inhabiting the cover. Both are characters coined by counterculture superstars. If you happen to hang out at street art slam-sessions, then you will be immediately familiar with artists Aaron Martin and Dean Bradley. Both are interviewed by Ito in the 0-0 edition, with large spreads featuring their edgy illustrations.

Ito, the magazine's Editor-In-Chief, is a 1999 Kamehameha Schools Kapālama graduate. Several other Kamehameha grads pepper the magazine's masthead. "The seven of us," Contrast's founders are all "between 25 and 30 years old."

"We all were edited by people we worked for, before," says Ito. "This was our chance to 'go off' and say whatever we felt like saying."

The Contrast team started with a web site, contrastmagazine.com, one year ago. Stories were published first to the site, then transitioned to the print product.

The magazine is currently offered for free at select locations. The preview edition, Vol. 0, No. 0 is currently available at In4mation, Aloha Army, Fitted HI, and Prototype. Vol. 1, No. 1, will be available in April in surf shops, street culture boutiques and other niche shops. Distribution is also planned for the California coast and Japan. Check the web site for more information.