Paul Budnitz: Difference between revisions
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===Budnitz Bicycles=== |
===Budnitz Bicycles=== |
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In 2010 Paul Budnitz created Budnitz Bicycles, following up on his lifelong passion for cycling. The company's philosophy is to create high-end urban bicycles that focus on quality and craftsmanship using high-end materials such as titanium and stainless steel.<ref name="about">[http://budnitzbicycles.com/about], Budnitz Bicycles about page</ref> The idea of building a bike company under his own name came after he had a couple of Black Sheep Bikes built for himself. He first wanted Black Sheep Bikes to make him replicas of the bikes he had already bought with the potential to go overseas and have them mass produced. Black Sheep Bikes felt it wasn't the best idea for the company brand image and went against their reason for building each of their bikes with their own hands in Colorado, and so told him they weren't interested.<ref>Black Sheep Bikes, [https://m.facebook.com/BLACKSHEEPBIKES/posts/10151541412193553 untitled post], Facebook, 11 July 2013.</ref> Budnitz took the bikes nonetheless and had them copied at another American bike company, and they are now being produced overseas. Budnitz has also stirred up controversy among online bicycling communities by suggesting that it is environmentally preferable to spend more money on a higher-quality bicycle that could last a lifetime, rather than spending less money on a bicycles with a shorter lifespan.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}} |
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In 2010 Budnitz created Budnitz Bicycles, following his lifelong passion for bicycling. Often called the Aston Martin of bicycles, Budnitz uses titanium and cro-moly steel to create the fastest, lightest, and among the most beautiful urban bicycles in the world. His bicycles have been featured in Vogue, V Magazine, Forbes, Uncrate, Coolhunting, and many other online and offline publications. In 2012 Phaidon called Budnitz, "The man who made bicycles beautiful again". |
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==References== |
==References== |
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Revision as of 14:43, 14 October 2013
 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (July 2013) |
Paul Budnitz | |
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| Born | Paul Budnitz September 14, 1967 |
Paul Budnitz (born September 14, 1967) is the founder of Kidrobot, a retailer of art toys, apparel and accessories. He also owns and runs Budnitz Bicycles, is an author of several books, exhibits as a photographer[citation needed] and filmmaker, and has founded a dozen companies.[citation needed]
Biography
Early life and education
The son of a nuclear physicist and a social worker, Budnitz was born and raised in Berkeley, California. From young, Budnitz displayed a mixed aptitude for computer programming and art. By the time he had reached high school, he was professionally coding safety analysis software for nuclear power plants[citation needed] and creating video games for the Commodore 64 home computer. Budnitz studied photography, sculpture and film at Yale University.
Early career
During his undergraduate degree Budnitz started his first business, M.O.B., selling clothing he created to museum stores worldwide.[citation needed] This soon evolved into collecting, selling, and modifying vintage Levi's and other things to wear, such as Air Jordans (which Budnitz sold in Japan for as much as $16,000 a pair[citation needed]). In 1990, Budnitz graduated with an honors degree in Art and began working on two films, 93 Million Miles from the Sun and the 13-minute-long[1] Ultraviolet. Both won awards at the Berlin Film Festival[citation needed] and were distributed worldwide. Artforum magazine hailed 93 Million Miles as "one of the best films of 1997."[citation needed]
Budnitz used Adobe Premiere to edit a full-length film on a Macintosh computer.[2]
In 1997, Budnitz started recording the sound for a 16mm film on MiniDisc, a new audio format that he encountered while on a trip to Tokyo. He hacked and customized the MiniDisc players to accommodate time-code, specifically for film and sound recording. This soon led him to found his third company, minidisco.com, which sold his reconfigured MiniDisc players on the Internet. By 2001 minidisco.com had become a $10 million business,[citation needed] running on home computers and using software Budnitz created.
Kidrobot
In 2002 Budnitz discovered images of limited edition vinyl toys from Japan and China based on cereal box characters and modified GI-Joes turned into stylized B-boys wearing streetwear. He recognized the toys as collectible art pieces that fused a variety of artistic disciplines: graffiti, graphic design, pop-art, and animation. He also recognized the absence of innovative art toys in North America, as well as a potential fanbase for this hybrid art form in the United States.
In 2002 Budnitz sold Minidisco and sunk the proceeds into founding Kidrobot in a California garage, using the technology he'd developed for his older businesses. He moved the new company to New York City in 2003.
Budnitz collaborated with friend Tristan Eaton, an illustrator he’d worked with on previous animated films, to create DUNNY, a vinyl figure designed to be customized by commissioned artists and MUNNY, a Do-it-Yourself (DIY) toy figure that Kidrobot customers could customize themselves.
In 2006, Budnitz added a complete apparel collection, co-designing the entire line. Like Kidrobot's toys, most of the apparel draws on the creative input of the artists of recently released toys.
In late 2006, Budnitz wrote the picture book I am Plastic: The Designer Toy Explosion, published by Harry Abrams. This shows the most popular and innovative toys in the designer art toy movement with chapters on Japan, China, Europe and the United States.
In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired 13 of Kidrobot's toys for its permanent collection.[citation needed] These include "Hello My Name is Dunny", "Bad Dunny" and "MUNNY 3″.
Budnitz maintains an online diary at paulbudnitz.com that has become a hub for the art toy community.[citation needed] His regular posts include artist interviews, coverage of Kidrobot events, rare toy releases and photographs of urban street art.
Budnitz has designed or art directed virtually every product created by Kidrobot since the company's inception. He has also co-designed all of Kidrobot's retail stores and the Kidrobot Room in Peter Gatien's CiRCA nightclub in Toronto.
In 2006, Kidrobot partnered with W!LDBRAIN, Inc. to begin working on animated films for theater and the web. In 2008, Paramount Pictures announced[citation needed] they had signed an agreement with Kidrobot to produce an animated feature film based on the Kidrobot aesthetic.
Budnitz has worked with many artists, designers, and fashion brands. A short list includes artists and illustrators Frank Kozik, Dalek, Doze Green, Tara McPherson, Huck Gee, Gary Baseman, Shepard Fairey, eBoy, Tilt, Mist, Joe Ledbetter, Tristan Eaton, Jeremeyville, To Die For, Junko Mizuno, Mori Chax, Touma, Mike and Katie Tado, Paul Pope, David Horvath; designers including Heatherette, Lemar and Dauley, Jil Sander, Dries Van Noten, Marc Jacobs, Visionaire, and Paul Smith; Musicians including Swizz Beatz, DJ QBert, and Gorillaz; and brands like Nike, Barney's NYC, LaCoste, Burton Snowboards, The Standard Hotels, Siemens, Swatch, and Volkswagen.[citation needed]
Budnitz Bicycles
In 2010 Paul Budnitz created Budnitz Bicycles, following up on his lifelong passion for cycling. The company's philosophy is to create high-end urban bicycles that focus on quality and craftsmanship using high-end materials such as titanium and stainless steel.[3] The idea of building a bike company under his own name came after he had a couple of Black Sheep Bikes built for himself. He first wanted Black Sheep Bikes to make him replicas of the bikes he had already bought with the potential to go overseas and have them mass produced. Black Sheep Bikes felt it wasn't the best idea for the company brand image and went against their reason for building each of their bikes with their own hands in Colorado, and so told him they weren't interested.[4] Budnitz took the bikes nonetheless and had them copied at another American bike company, and they are now being produced overseas. Budnitz has also stirred up controversy among online bicycling communities by suggesting that it is environmentally preferable to spend more money on a higher-quality bicycle that could last a lifetime, rather than spending less money on a bicycles with a shorter lifespan.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Description of Ultraviolet, Berlinale, 2002.
- ^ Shoshana Berger, "Film hacker", Wired, April 1996. Accessed 21 July 2013.
- ^ [1], Budnitz Bicycles about page
- ^ Black Sheep Bikes, untitled post, Facebook, 11 July 2013.
External links
- PaulBudnitz.com
- Paul Budnitz at IMDb
- "Paul Budnitz from Kidrobot interviewed by Steven Heller", Core77, 27 August 2007.
- Carolina D'Souza, "Paul Budnitz: The Kidrobot story", Gulf News, 18 July 2008.
- Steven Heller, "Toy story" (review of I am Plastic), New York Times, 28 January 2007.
- "Paul Budnitz: Kidrobot", Nylon, 27 September 2007.
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